Hyunmo Yang (b. 1987)’s work begins with the observation of ever-changing landscapes outside the window or flickering candle flames—forms that sway and intertwine unpredictably. For Yang, these are not merely physical shapes or fleeting scenes but reflections of internal states, points of projection through which meaning is continuously sought and redefined.
 
Yang continues this practice by engaging in self-referential observation, carrying forward a body of work that generates successive paintings, as if in the process of equilibrium.

Hyunmo Yang begins his work by observing the disorder inherent in his subjects. For instance, the view outside a window may, on some days, feel like passing through an endlessly continuous tunnel, while on others it appears to change incessantly like an open sky. A candle flame, meanwhile, never ceases to flicker as if on the verge of going out, yet it firmly maintains its center around the wick.
 
Yang has consistently focused on such subjects that embody both instability and solidity—entities that are difficult to measure or define with clarity. To convey this, the layered traces of his brushstrokes capture movements of transition that unfold continuously.

In Hyunmo Yang’s first solo exhibition, 《Black Coloured Light》 (2019), held at Show and Tell, the artist sought to create “darkness that does not disappear into light” in Seoul—a city that appears to have forgotten darkness altogether. He painted scenes gathered from his walks through the night, imagining what might exist within the dark landscapes beyond light.
 
His attention was drawn to sudden appearances of light, faint forms that resist clear distinction, and shadows that emerge even more deeply black within the darkness.

In exhibitions, Yang’s paintings are placed not within the conventional white cube of white walls, but within a space rendered in deep gray. This gray environment suggests that what his work evokes is not a darkness that renders everything unseen, but rather a darkness that insists on being seen—even if only faintly.
 
The gray space operates in contrast to white or black walls, which tend to reduce paintings to a single tonality or direct attention to specific areas. Instead, the dark gray walls reveal that Yang’s paintings articulate something that is neither pure black nor white light, but something in between.
 
As viewers take another, closer look at the surface, something gradually begins to emerge within subtle shifts of tone: a spray bottle, a clothes hanger, walls and ceilings, or someone’s face. Making “what was hard to see in the dark” become “something that can be seen”—this is the first operation Hyunmo Yang’s painting performs as an object of looking.

At the moment one tries to see something—or when something begins to come into view—darkness takes a step back. Just as one believes they have barely grasped a vague form in the dark as a distinct object, it transforms into something no longer fully dark, revealing that there is something even darker beyond it.
 
In this way, pointing to darkness involves a continual retreat toward something darker, rendering the surrounding space not stark and clearly defined, but blurred and dim. Yang’s paintings thus generate another dynamic of looking: by enabling us to see, they reveal what remains unseen. The artist refers to this operative quality of his painting as “Black Coloured Light.”

Meanwhile, in his 2023 solo exhibition 《Burning symmetry》 at Roy Gallery, Hyunmo Yang focused on visual perception and the process of accepting meaning derived from such methods.
 
Through images constructed around symmetry as a fundamental unit, the exhibition examined points at which opposing concepts—blurredness and density—collapse and intersect, allowing their meanings to cross over. In particular, the exhibition articulated Yang’s sequential reflections on symmetry, grounded in a process of painting that unfolds from solid forms to soft forms, and then to blurred forms.

For Yang, symmetry becomes a clue for finding a sense of density within blurred forms. Symmetry is commonly understood as mere repetition of identical shapes. Most things—whether natural objects such as plants and animals, or artificial ones such as cars and architecture—follow rules that repeat particular forms. Yang, however, discovers balance in things that are in motion, such as the shape of a candle flame.
 
A candle flame never ceases to flicker as if it might go out at any moment, yet it maintains its form around the wick as its center. In the trembling flame, Yang becomes attentive to a paradoxical concept: a latent density that sustains the balance of form beneath a blurred and unstable appearance. It is this coexistence of fragility and firmness that lies at the core of his interest.

In this way, symmetry—evoking dual and opposing qualities—becomes a fundamental unit through which Hyunmo Yang composes images in his practice. While his work encompasses various types of symmetry, including bilateral, inverse, and rotational symmetry, what is at stake is not the depiction of symmetry itself but the process of achieving balance through the act of forming symmetry.
 
As a result, what emerges is not a symmetry that fully replicates or repeats everything, but forms that waver and pause, remaining in the midst of continuously negotiating and generating balance.

The exhibition presented three series of paintings based on these reflections: ‘Shield,’ which embodies solidity, ‘Soft Squares’ which questions such solidity, and ‘Burning Symmetry’ which blurs solidity. ‘Shield’ comprises of Yang’s symmetry and brings into clear focus a sense of density rooted in his impressions. Taking cues from such objects of shields, emblems, and turtle shells the artist draws clear, crips lines and shapes in his penchant for density.

‘Soft Squares’ is a series that questions this solidity and inspires a sense of mobility and tactility along the graphic squares and soft touches of his paintings.
 
The final installment in ‘Burning Symmetry’ creates visual impressions of blurred movements rather than chasing distinct symmetry. Here, previously established solid images take on the attribute of blur, naturally breaking apart and transforming into mutable forms.

Meanwhile, this series of works culminating in ‘Burning Symmetry’ unfolds Yang’s pictorial world as a self-referential endeavor, generating successive paintings that seem to “overwrite” the concepts of earlier works. In his earlier practice, he pursued reflections on “darkness” by depicting faint forms perceived by vision at minimal levels of brightness.
 
He later produced empty canvases in which even the small remnants of light within darkness were erased. From there, he replaced the binary opposition of darkness and light with the sensory terms of blurriness and clarity, allowing the two to coexist within the same pictorial space.
 
The ‘Shield’ explored in the exhibition 《Burning symmetry》 emerges from this trajectory: from the initial painterly inquiry into darkness, through the coexistence of blurriness and clarity, toward a focus on clarity—put differently, solidity—as a subject in itself. ‘Burning Symmetry’ then proceeds by blurring the image of the ‘Shield,’ through an approach that feels as though solidity itself were being set on fire.

Although this may appear to return to his earlier examinations of darkness in its focus on blurriness, it carries significance as a new inquiry that emerges from—and builds upon—his many past attempts to grapple with darkness, blurriness and clarity, and solidity. Going beyond a simple contrast of tonal values, this body of work weaves in investigations of painterly form, flatness, and tactility, reflecting a deepened line of inquiry that probes the grounds on which oppositions are formed and the balance that exists between them.
 
In this way, Yang’s reflections on blurriness, solidity, and their forms and meanings draw distant opposites toward one another, bringing them into closer proximity. This paradoxical imagination becomes the foundation for his act of painting, while the accumulated traces of brushstrokes capture a continuous movement of transition.

Meanwhile, in his solo exhibition 《Whispering Currents》 (Roy Gallery, 2025), Hyunmo Yang presented works that project onto himself the sense of disorder he perceived in the sky outside his window and in distant urban landscapes. Rather than merely observing the view beyond the window, the artist reads into it elements that are closely intertwined with himself.
 
Through Yang’s gaze, the unstable scenery outside the window overlaps with his inner thoughts, emotions, memories, past, and future. In other words, the artist looks at himself and the world simultaneously.

The resulting series of works reveals a delicate balance between the dual qualities of instability and solidity. For instance, in the ‘Flexible Form’ series, lines are placed across surfaces that seem as if they might endlessly waver, creating a sense of stability within unease.
 
Here, the horizontal lines that divide the canvas into three sections, along with the intersecting vertical lines, arrest the viewer’s gaze and prevent excessive visual turbulence caused by color or amorphous forms. In Yang’s work, straight lines often serve as a metaphor for the human attitude of steadily moving forward through a given life.

In this way, Hyunmo Yang cuts, accumulates, and refines elements that cannot be clearly measured, completing distinctly new pictorial surfaces through his own singular method. Examining sensation itself through the most elemental units of form—points, lines, planes, and shapes—Yang affirms instability as a fundamental condition of human existence.
 
In other words, moving in a continuous cycle from sensory experience to inner exploration, Yang seeks to reveal aspects of life that resist language, asserting painting as the most direct means through which they can be perceived.

 “As I work, I feel as though I am moving back and forth between the amorphous and the geometric. The way I perceive the world doesn’t seem to flow in a consistent manner. It feels somehow mixed or disordered. In that sense, it resembles being human.”   (Hyunmo Yang, from a Leepoetique interview)

Hyunmo Yang received his BFA and MFA in Painting from Seoul National University. His solo exhibitions include 《Whispering Currents》(Roy Gallery, Seoul, 2025), 《Burning symmetry》 (Roy Gallery, Seoul, 2023), and 《Black Coloured Light》 (Show and Tell, Seoul, 2019).
 
He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including 《Transurfing》 (Noblesse Collection, Seoul, 2025), 《Peephole》 (ARC1, Seoul, 2024), 《Exhibition \ Publication》 (WESS, Seoul, 2022), 《No place like home》 (Artspace 0, Seoul, 2021), 《Support SARUBIA 2020》(Project Space Sarubia, Seoul, 2020), and more.
 
In 2024, Yang was selected for ‘New Abstract Art’ curated by Artsy, and in 2025 was named among ‘136 Abstract Artists Selected by 80 Art Professionals’ in Art in Culture (May issue).

References

• 로이갤러리, 양현모 (Roy Gallery, Hyunmo Yang)
• DIA Contemporary, 양현모 (DIA Contemporary, Hyunmo Yang)
• 쇼앤텔, [서문] 검은색빛 (Show and Tell, [Preface] Black Coloured Light)
• 로이갤러리, [서문] Burning symmetry (Roy Gallery, [Preface] Burning symmetry)
• 로이갤러리, [서문] 일렁이는 오늘 (Roy Gallery, [Preface] Whispering Currents)
• 리포에틱, [인터뷰] 양현모 (Leepoetique, [Interview] Hyunmo Yang)