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About the Artist
Working with a restricted palette of Umber and Ultramarine pigments mixed with turpentine, Yun Hyong-keun developed a unique pictorial language rooted in Korean and East Asian aesthetic traditions.
His paintings absorb light, creating surfaces of profound depth and quietude. Through repeated applications of thinned pigment, the canvas itself becomes a ground for meditation.
Selected Works
1978
Umber-Blue
Oil on canvas
1980
Burnt Umber
Oil on linen
1993
Untitled 93-77
Oil on linen
Recent Exhibitions
On View & Past
On View
RM x SFMOMA: Between You and Me
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
Group Exhibition
3 Oct 2026 – 7 Feb 2027
Past
reimagine Yun Hyong-keun
PKM Gallery, Seoul
Solo Exhibition
26 Aug – 10 Oct 2026
Past
Every Island is a Mountain
Palazzo Malta, Venice
Group Exhibition
19 Apr – 8 Sep 2024
In a casual way Yun Hyong-keun builds up an image
so striking that it makes a strong impress
upon the visual memory.
The impression is not so much of a pattern
but so much as of
a strong presence that moves in upon the viewer even
after he has taken his eyes off the painting.
Joseph Love, 1976
Yusuke Nakahara, 1989
The paintings of Yun Hyong-keun have a character that forces people who
see them into silence. It seems that the more you talk about them,
the further away the word escapes from his paintings.
On the contrary, a strong message is transmitted from them.
It is no exaggeration to say that the message is so strong that
once you have seen his works, you cannot forget it.
Just as the humanity of Yun Hyong-keun and his art are
big-hearted and unaffected, so are his paintings. When I say that
his works are unaffected, I mean that naturalness is
not limited to his personality alone, but rather his personality is reflected in
his unaffected works, or to put it another way,
his taste and temperament are unveiled right there on the canvas.
Yil Lee, 1989
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