Solo Exhibitions (Brief)

Yoon’s solo exhibitions include 《Mirae》 (Mirae Building, Seoul, 2024), 《Drive to the Moon and Galaxy》 (Gajah Gallery, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 2023), 《Tagging》 (Hall1, CYLINDER, Seoul, 2022), 《Canvases》 (Hakgojae, Seoul, 2020), 《Liquid Rescale》(DOOSAN Gallery, New York, 2017), and more.

Group Exhibitions (Brief)

Yoon has also participated in numerous major group exhibitions at institutions such as the 2018 Gwangju Biennale (2018), Seoul Museum of Art (2018), Sotheby’s Institute New York (2017), Atelier Hermès (2017), Ilmin Museum of Art (2015), National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea (2014), and Platform-L Gimusa (2009).

Residencies (Selected)

Yoon has been in residence at various prestigious programs including Seoul Art Space Geumcheon (2024), CAN Foundation Myeongnyundong Studio (2023), SeMA Nanji Residency (2020), DOOSAN Residency New York (2017), and MMCA Residency Goyang (2015).

Collections (Selected)

Her works are held in collections at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea, Seoul Museum of Art, Incheon Art Platform, and Arario Museum, among others. 

Originality & Identity

Hyangro Yoon captures the references, production, and consumption structures of images within the contemporary digital environment with a sense of critical distance, expanding them into new possibilities for abstract painting. Her representative ‘Screenshot’ (2017-) series transforms specific scenes from Japanese animation into unfamiliar abstract forms through repeated editing of immaterial images. In her solo exhibition 《Liquid Rescale》(DOOSAN Gallery, New York, 2017), Yoon reconstructed the temporality and consumption speed inherent to images through what she describes as “a journey of tracing the image.”

Later, in the solo exhibition 《Canvases》(Hakgojae Gallery, Seoul, 2020), Yoon connected her personal narrative with art historical references, exploring how personal stories intersect with the global flow of images. Notably, she “digitally mapped” textual materials related to Helen Frankenthaler’s abstract expressionism and reinterpreted them through her own painterly language, proposing images where generations, time, and culture overlap.

Subsequently, in her solo exhibition 《Tagging》(Hall1, CYLINDER, Seoul, 2022), Yoon presented the ‘Tagging’ (2022-) series, which reinterprets the diverse historical and spatial contexts of graffiti—from ancient Pompeian inscriptions to the tagging practices of social media—in a contemporary manner. This body of work constructs a new system of painterly symbols where boundaries between past and present, local and global, physical space and virtual space are intertwined.

In her recent solo exhibition 《Mirae》(Mirae Building, Seoul, 2024), Yoon expanded this notion of “temporal hybridity” through future-oriented imagination. The large-scale ceiling painting Mirae: Map for Sky and Roots (2024), presented in the exhibition, intertwined historical sites in Okinawa, personal experiences, and an as-yet-unrealized future into a non-linear narrative. Through this work, Yoon visualizes the boundaries of life and death, the past and the future, prompting existential questions.

Style & Contents

Hyangro Yoon’s practice is grounded in the traditional materials of painting, such as canvas and paint, while actively incorporating digital image editing techniques. The ‘Screenshot’ (2017) series undergoes Photoshop manipulation before being transferred to canvas using an airbrush, capturing the surface texture of digital images. Representative works such as Screenshot 3.02.24-2 (2017) and Screenshot 9.12.11-1-3 (2017) traverse the boundary between digital and analog, experimenting with painterly abstraction.

In 《Canvases》, Yoon transformed the entire exhibition space at Hakgojae Gallery into a virtual canvas, extracting 17 different formats and over 100 image fragments for output and installation. Works such as :)◆30F-3 (2020) combined digital mapping, inkjet printing, airbrushing, and oil stick to construct a multilayered visual narrative.

In the ‘Tagging’ series, which materializes graffiti-like gestures and the conceptual meaning of tagging, Yoon fused Epson UltraChrome inkjet printing with acrylic paint, re-summoning the past and present into layered compositions. Works such as Tagging-C1, C2, C3 (2022) and Tagging-H (2022) evolved into painterly installations tailored to the architectural structures of the exhibition spaces.

Her recent work Mirae: Map for Sky and Roots expanded into a large-scale ceiling installation, composed of 26 connected canvases totaling approximately 19,000x800cm. Through the use of acrylic, liquid chrome ink, and inkjet printing, Yoon symbolically visualized narratives of life and death, the history of caves, and the link between past and future.

Topography & Continuity

Hyangro Yoon has consistently experimented with the intersection of digital imagery and painting. The ‘Screenshot’ series combined a critical perspective on digital consumption structures with an exploration of painting’s materiality, while 《Liquid Rescale》 reversed the speed and processes of image production through the language of painting.

Starting with 《Canvases》(2020), her practice began incorporating personal narratives and art historical references into layered storytelling. From 2022 onward, the ‘Tagging’ series expanded into architectural spaces, further developing multilayered spatiotemporal structures. In 《Mirae》(2024), Yoon deepened her practice by linking historical sites with speculative, future-oriented imagination.

Currently, Yoon’s works are held in major institutional collections, including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea and Seoul Museum of Art. Her exhibitions on the international stage, such as 《Drive to the Moon and Galaxy》(Gajah Gallery, Indonesia, 2023), have further introduced her practice to a global audience.

Looking ahead, the artist is expected to expand her interdisciplinary experiments that integrate techniques, materiality, history, and digital processes within painting. Through this, she will continue to re-mediate the intangible landscapes of contemporary society into new abstract visual languages.