Jaeyeon Yoo (b. 1988) constructs landscapes in which reality and fantasy coexist, emerging from contemplations of the night. She unravels both major and minor events encountered in daily life—along with the personal imagination and reflections that arise from them—by focusing on the time and space of “night.”

Jaeyeon Yoo’s work consists of fragments that fall away from the gap where fantasy and reality intersect, while also drawing from private memories. She tenderly visualizes experiences and recollections from her childhood, while introducing unsettling situations or ambiguous figures into the scene. Through this, she seeks to express the distance between dual realms—such as society and the individual, past and present, interior and exterior, existence and perception.

The nocturnal spaces that form the primary settings of her work also stem from her own experiences. While living in London, Yoo recalls being struck by how places once crowded and bustling during the day would quietly subside at night, becoming enveloped in silence as if they had never been noisy at all.
 
In particular, the experience of crossing a park in the stillness of night allowed her to discover and sense aspects of the city entirely different from what she had previously known. The sounds of insects and the subtle movements of animals felt amplified, and these small yet vivid sensations evoked in her a feeling of escape—as though she had momentarily stepped outside the present world.

Based on these unfamiliar sensations, Jaeyeon Yoo began developing the ‘Night Walker’ series in 2016, depicting figures who walk alone during the quiet hours of the night. In this body of work, she expresses the dual states of isolation and freedom that she personally experienced, using the fleeting time and space of night—which suddenly appears and just as quickly fades—to portray landscapes where the boundaries between reality and fantasy intermingle.

The blue hue that envelops her compositions serves as a metaphor for—and a visualization of—the boundary between reality and unreality. Yoo refers to the moment just after sunset, when darkness settles over the city and every scene is washed in blue, as “Blue Time.” During this hour, the bright daylight of distinct clarity quietly recedes into the dark, and the boundary between sky and river dissolves into a continuous expanse of blue.
 
Holding onto the sensation of that fleeting, reassuring blue light, she builds it up on the canvas in thin, translucent layers.

In her 2019 solo exhibition 《The Night is Young》 at Gallery Lux, Jaeyeon Yoo captured fleeting contemplations of the night through scenes of people walking beneath the blue nocturnal sky.
 
Regarding the works presented in 《The Night is Young》, she described them as “fragments produced when the symbolic order constructed by the individual encounters the reality of society.” Through these works, she speaks of the gap between the fantastical experiences found in the quiet, inward depths of night and the real world, which carries the ambivalent qualities of both disconnection and exchange.

In addition, her works, which unfold a sense of time and space where reality and fantasy coexist, are marked by pronounced drawing-like elements. Jaeyeon Yoo’s painterly style—sometimes reminiscent of animation—may at first appear bright and charming, yet the moment one becomes aware of the subversive content embedded within, the gap between surface and interior is revealed.

Meanwhile, in her 2021 solo exhibition 《Great to see you》, Jaeyeon Yoo visualized nocturnal fantasies that expanded during the pandemic and lockdown she experienced while living in London in 2020, when exchanges with others became difficult. Looking outside through a window, the sounds and scenery she perceived indirectly seemed endlessly flattened and subdued, yet she continued to trace the lingering presence and imaginings of people.
 
The resulting canvases were filled with supernatural landscapes and fairy-tale-like scenes of encounters. These fantastical elements also emerged as condensed forms of thoughts she had long carried in daily life, surfacing from the unconscious as distinct motifs.

For instance, the figure referred to as the “boy” in her paintings may at times represent the artist herself, at others someone she imagines, or even the unnamed protagonist of a certain story. The fear and contemplation of death that one inevitably encounters in life may appear in forms resembling a “grave,” while a large, white, luminous “bird”—like a unicorn that covers and shelters everything—may also emerge.
 
Yet Yoo does not regard these elements as carrying fixed or singular meanings. Within her canvases, they remain flexible presences, capable of continual transformation—for the one who paints them and for the one who looks at them.

In the exhibition, Yoo also introduced her ‘piece-painting’ works alongside the ongoing ‘Night Walker’ series. Comprising bodies of work such as ‘Home Boat’ and ‘Nightscape,’ these piece-paintings are rendered on irregularly shaped canvases, traversing the boundary between sculpture and painting.
 
Her piece-painting does not refer to a fragment of a sculpture, but rather to something divided “piece by piece.” This series undergoes a process in which small marker drawings extracted from her sketchbooks are enlarged with added thickness and reborn within real space as flat, sculptural fragments.
 
The piece-paintings presented in the exhibition recombined scenes of parks she had once freely visited and sketched outdoors with views observed through her window during the lockdown, merging memories of unrestricted movement with moments of confinement.

In her 2023 solo exhibition 《Run Hide Tell》 at Art Sohyang, Jaeyeon Yoo metaphorically framed the act of “drawing” as a way of running from reality, hiding within the canvas, and then returning to the world to tell.
 
The new works from the ‘Night Walker’ series presented in this exhibition were imagined as events unfolding at the entrance to a forest, just as one begins to step into its depths. The recurring figures who move between various nocturnal settings pause momentarily, assuming gestures that suggest they are engaged in some quiet act.
 
For instance, they peer into light seeping out from hollowed bushes, or lean and sit absorbed in contemplation, gazing at unfolding events. These scenes do not merely convey isolation; they also hold the latent possibility of eventually stepping back outside and speaking to the world once more.

Furthermore, her 2025 solo exhibition 《Weeping Brushes》 at Dohing Art extended the trajectory of the ‘Night Walker’ series by exploring the nocturnal studio. Yoo reflected not only on those who make a profession of creation—painters, sculptors, writers, poets—but also on individuals who sit at a kitchen table or a small desk, writing texts no one may read or drawing images no one may see.
 
The exhibition was grounded in contemplations of experiences such as staying up all night to make something, or scribbling into a notebook as though pouring out one’s thoughts. At the same time, she paid close attention to the minor, incidental moments that arise within the creative process itself.

Discovering an unexpectedly radiant color within a lump of paint on the palette, feeling a thrill at the first line revealed between layers of accumulated pigment, or noticing beauty in the ripples and foam of water as brushes are washed—these moments become hidden joys within the journey of creation. Even the trace of a tiny insect left on a gessoed surface remains as an accidental record, allowing the studio to expand into a place where trivial yet meaningful events quietly accumulate.
 
Having begun with the freedom and solitude of those walking alone in the night park, Yoo gradually turned her focus toward a more intrinsic inner landscape. An unlit studio, brushes and pencils, scattered materials and notes, even paintings leaning against the wall in mid-process—all these objects and scenes, though set indoors, respond to and intersect with one another within the canvas. In this way, the artist’s studio becomes a landscape in which the boundary between inside and outside remains uncertain.

《Weeping Brushes》 invited viewers to reflect on the solitude and immersion the artist confronts alone, along with the tools and spaces that make such encounters possible. A drooping brush becomes both a symbol of frustration and of life, while the quiet studio holds loneliness alongside the essential energy of creation. In this way, Jaeyeon Yoo’s painting dissolves the boundaries between tool and human, space and interiority, presenting a newly imagined landscape.

In this way, Jaeyeon Yoo weaves into her blue-toned canvases fragments that have fallen from the gap where fantasy and reality meet, set against the backdrop of night—a time when what is difficult to perceive reveals itself and quietly sinks into the inner self. Her work evokes the subtle emotions that arise when disparate realms—society and the individual, past and present, reality and ideal—encounter one another, leaving room for earnest contemplation beyond the fantastical surface.

 “Since I began painting through the lens of an artist, I have come to pay attention to every gap I encounter in this world. The gaps I wish to speak of are those between adult and child, phenomenon and reality, work and play, society and fantasy, fear and dream, family and society, knowledge and emotion.
 
Nothing in this world unfolds exactly as I see it. The world is always slightly split, and through those cracks, I peer beneath the surface.”   (Jaeyeon Yoo, Artist’s Note)

Jaeyeon Yoo received her BFA in Western Painting from Ewha Womans University and her MFA in Painting from the Royal College of Art in the United Kingdom. Her solo exhibitions include 《Weeping Brushes》 (Dohing Art, Seoul, 2025), 《Night Sketch》 (Dohing Art, Seoul, 2024), 《Run Hide Tell》 (Art Sohyang, Busan, 2023), and 《Dream Weaving》 (Union Gallery, London, 2023).
 
She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including 《When Fantasy Becomes Reality》 (Art Center Zain, Seoul, 2024), 《Stretching into a shape》 (New Spring Project, Seoul, 2023), 《STILL STANDING》 (Union Gallery, London, 2022), 《No One Is Here》 (Dohing Art, Seoul, 2021), 《Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night》 (Chapter II & Chapter II Yard, Seoul, 2020), and 《EMAP 2019 [BE COLORED]》 (Ewha Womans University, Seoul, 2019).
 
Yoo is the recipient of the HIX AWARD (2016) and the Dentons Art Prize (2017). Her works are included in the collections of the MMCA Government Art Bank, MMCA Art Bank, and Hello Museum.

References

• 유재연, Jaeyeon Yoo (Artist’s Webstie)
• 하입비스트, 유재연 인터뷰: 밤의 생경한 풍경을 사유하는 몽상가
• Villiv, 런던과 서울, 두 도시의 밤을 걷는 나이트 워커
• 노블레스 컬렉션, [인터뷰] 유재연 (Noblesse Collection, [Interview] Jaeyeon Yoo)
• 갤러리룩스, [작가노트] The Night is Young (Gallery Lux, [Artist’s Note] The Night is Young)
• 갤러리룩스, [전시 개요] Great to see you (Gallery Lux, [Exhibition Overview] Great to see you)
• 아트소향, [전시 개요] Run Hide Tell (Art Sohyang, [Exhibition Overview] Run Hide Tell)
• 도잉아트, [전시 개요] Weeping Brushes (Dohing Art, [Exhibition Overview] Weeping Brushes)