Originality & Identity

Miryu Yoon centers her practice on figurative painting but shifts focus from detailed depiction to the translation of fleeting, abstract emotions. Her figures serve not as portraits of psychological identity but as intermediaries of sensation—devices for visual experimentation.

By staging photographic scenes and blending the real with the fictional, she constructs visual moments that defy conventional narrative fixity. Her paintings transcend representation, inviting the viewer into private, abstract experiences through rhythm, color, and brushwork.

Style & Contents

Her process begins with staged photography, often using tools like the iPhone’s Live Photo function to capture both deliberate and incidental moments. These ephemeral impressions—reflections of light, gestures, colors—are then reconfigured onto canvas.

Early works observed people in her surroundings, but later works involved more directed scenes, often with her close acquaintances as actors. In exhibitions like Pyromaniac(2023) and Do Wetlands Scare You? (2024), narrative intensity and performative elements become more pronounced, with increasing emphasis on the materiality of paint, layered textures, and chromatic experimentation.

Topography & Continuity

Rather than forming a continuous storyline, Yoon’s paintings accumulate fragmented sensations across time and space—Incheon, Dublin, and other lived experiences all inform her work. By placing familiar figures in unfamiliar settings, she explores a subtle interplay of intimacy and estrangement.

Her paintings function as sites where performance, photography, and painterly language converge. This fluid transition between mediums reveals her persistent inquiry into the possibilities of painting and its ongoing expansion beyond the static frame.