Born in Seoul, Sooyeon Hong earned both her B.F.A. and M.F.A. from the Department of Painting at Hongik University, and later pursued further graduate studies at Pratt Institute in New York. After establishing her career in New York, she relocated to Seoul in the aftermath of September 11 and has since maintained a prolific practice based in Korea.

Since her first solo exhibition in 1992, Hong has presented numerous solo exhibitions at prestigious venues, including the POSCO Art Museum, Kumho Museum of Art, Total Museum, and Space So. Among these, the large-scale exhibition Drawn Elephant: Abstraction抽象 (2022) at the Coreana Museum of Art (space*c) marked a significant expansion in her practice. Taking place after more than thirty years of artistic activity, the exhibition introduced a series of new artistic approaches that further broadened and deepened the trajectory of her work. This momentum continued with Anamnesis at Indipress Gallery in 2024, followed by the 2025 solo exhibitions In the Flow at Gallery Kiwa in London and Long Beginning at Horanggasynamu Art Polygon.

Hong has also participated in major group exhibitions at renowned institutions, including The Second Skin at ONE AND J. Gallery, Sporadic Positioning at Arario Gallery, Gefäße at Stiftung Zollverein (Germany), Korean Eye at Saatchi Gallery (London), Small Is Beautiful at Flowers Gallery (New York), MoA-picks: reminiscing the medium-a ‘post-’syndrome at SNU MoA, Korean Modernism at Kumho Museum of Art, and Sense & Sensibility at Busan Museum of Art.

Her dedication has been further recognized through residencies at the MMCA Changdong Residency and Opekta Studios in Cologne, Germany. Following grants from the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture in 2022 and 2024, Hong was designated an ARKO Selection artist by the Arts Council Korea (ARKO) for the period 2024–2026, receiving intensive multi-year support. Her works are held in the collections of major public museums and institutions.

Driven by a commitment to resisting the inertia of self-replication of her past works, the artist continuously challenges established boundaries to move forward, attempting to widen her perspective on Mother Nature— if not the general physics of the world we live in. The foundation of her practice lies in an energy that prioritizes evolution over mere change, and productive tension over comfort. In every moment, she seeks to redefine her own chronology in its most raw and unadulterated form, maintaining the essence of the prototype of her artistic journey.

Can you tell us about your background and how you started your artistic journey?

Born in Seoul, I grew up in an environment where painting was a constant presence, largely influenced by my mother, who specialized in Korean traditional painting. Naturally immersed in materials like ink, water, hanji, and mineral pigments from a young age, art became an organic part of my life. At one point, I was so captivated by the beauty of movement that I even considered majoring in dance. I believe the instinctive sense of rhythm and balance I developed then became ingrained within me, serving as a sensory tool to tune the subtle equilibrium of energy on my canvases today.

In fact, physicality is as much an essence of painting as the materials themselves. I primarily work with large canvases laid flat on the floor. In this process, which requires precisely controlling the flow of paint while enduring long hours of physical labor, my bodily constraints—such as the bend of my waist or the reach of my arms—naturally dictate the composition. For me, equilibrium is not an abstract concept; it is the tangible result of the physical trajectories and time my body has endured on the canvas.

After graduate school, I began my career as a full-time artist in New York. While striving to establish myself there, I was selected as a first-generation resident artist for the MMCA Changdong Residency. However, on the cusp of my return to Korea, I witnessed the tragedy of the 9/11 attacks in 2001, which deepened my existential anxieties. I returned home carrying the lingering shadows of that overwhelming despair.

While refining those memories back in Korea, I found myself confronting a raw, dormant sensation from my childhood—the memory of being swept away by a massive wave, standing on the threshold between life and death. I still vividly recall the desperate, instinctive movement—the locomotion—toward life at that brink, and the paradoxical stillness that followed the chaos.

As someone naturally sensitive to physical sensations, those intense movements at the edge of life and death became the core rhythm and breath of my artistic world. To be honest, it was not easy to speak of such a deeply private and surreal experience. I kept it buried within me for a long time, fearing that this personal narrative might overshadow the essence of my work. However, I have finally broken my silence because I realize that these sensations are an undeniable root of my life. I feel it is time to clearly face and articulate the true origin of the core rhythm that resonates through my work.

How do you stay inspired and motivated to create new work?

As I mentioned earlier, my work is an attempt to visually ignite those fleeting moments summoned not as mere visual images, but as visceral responses of sensory cells that transcend time and space. The process of reinterpreting and varying these summoned sensations is the most fundamental motivation of my work, providing the core momentum that imbues my art with its unique tension and originality.

Given the nature of my practice, which involves leading a single series over a long period, I focus on exploring inner routes rather than relying on fleeting inspirations. Even when a project begins with a personal narrative, I strive to record and experiment with the events and interests surrounding me so that I do not become confined within my own story. I am always on guard against mannerism, maintaining an attitude of exploring unknown territories as if following a map into uncharted artistic realms.

A representative example of this is my 2022 exhibition, Drawn Elephant: Abstract, which marked a significant shift in my working style. This began with an unexpected investigation into a language I had taken for granted for decades. When I realized that the ‘Sang’ in the East Asian term for abstraction (抽象, Chusang) uses the character for ‘Elephant’ (象) rather than ‘Image’ (像), it came as a fresh shock—a mix of intellectual debt and discovery.

While the English word ‘Abstract’ etymologically means ‘to draw from’ in Latin, I felt a strong artistic urge to provide my own pictorial answer as to why Eastern scholars borrowed the metaphor of an ‘elephant’ when translating this concept. For me, inspiration is a process of retracing inner sensations while simultaneously deconstructing and reconstructing concepts taken for granted. This intellectual inquiry is the most powerful force that allows me to sustain my artistic world without exhaustion.

What are the main themes or concepts you explore in your work?

It is often said that a human being is a microcosm of the universe. I, too, came to exist in this space-time through the ‘Big Bang’ of birth, and the countless people and situations I have encountered along the way have remained within me as memories and relationships of varying intensities. While the longest-feeling minute is the one that just passed, and the clearest scenery is the object right before our eyes, I approach my work with the belief that something transcending these mundane truths exists within the human subconscious.

Based on this ontological belief, I delve into existential themes such as birth and death, focusing on expanding the horizons of abstraction. For me, visual art—regardless of whether it is two-dimensional or three-dimensional—is a process of extracting images latent within the artist’s life and subconscious through selective memory. Just as ancient sages likened this to the ‘imagination of drawing out an elephant’ (Abstraction-抽象), I strive to capture invisible flows through the trajectories on my canvas.

I focus particularly on the tense balance of power and movement that exists beneath a state of stillness, moving beyond the imaginary concepts of ‘Time’ and ‘Space’ constructed for human convenience. Ironically, I have been interested in constructing a non-static surface through painting, and to achieve this, I have long employed a method of compressing time by accumulating multiple layers. Within the frame, dualistic extremes—black and white, light and shadow, existence and nothingness, static silence and explosive energy—contrast yet reveal subtle points of contact.

I believe this tendency originates from the near-death experience of my childhood mentioned earlier. My work is rooted in that immersion into a silent world at the threshold of death, and the illusion of movement I felt within that frozen moment. In this ‘Silent Zone,’ where physical trauma and existential realization intersect, I create my own visual depth where I can sink infinitely, disconnected from the everyday world.

Recently, I have been moving beyond the constraints of controlling the subconscious, immersing myself deeper into the hidden dimensions of the fundamental world. Since 2022, I have been conducting emotional experiments to decompress the layers I once meticulously built up, returning to the essential ‘dot’ within empty space.

This flow originates from my childhood memories of the wondrous afterimages created by light from a 35mm film projector as it passed through empty space. No longer confined to the static two-dimensional image, I am continuing an attempt to expand painterly energy into time and space through video works that reconstruct my paintings as source material. This is also a process of actively inviting “meaningful coincidences” (Synchronicity) by exposing fluid traces instead of fixed surfaces. Through this, I seek a new equilibrium where artistic evolution and existential experience coexist, coordinating the obsessive precision and control I have maintained for so long.

Who or what are your biggest influences, both artistically and personally?

The fundamental foundation of my life and work is the independent environment in which I was raised. Beyond the fortune of growing up in a harmonious family, my parents’ busy work schedules allowed me to early on internalize a free-spirited attitude of thinking, deciding, and taking responsibility for myself. Sustaining an artistic practice is a grueling journey requiring a continuous series of choices and repetitive discipline. I believe the strength that allows me to endure and continue this process flexibly stems from that independent temperament, engraved in me like a fingerprint.

The familiar materiality of Korean traditional painting materials, which I encountered since childhood, naturally led to experiments with Automatism, dealing with traces of the subconscious. However, it was during my years in New York that I truly felt the practical context of these attempts. The overwhelming experience of time expanding before the works of Mark Rothko, and the shock of facing the peculiar chill radiating from Giorgio de Chirico’s paintings, remain vivid. Tracing the footsteps of these masters, I realized that my endeavors resided within the contexts of Abstract Expressionism and Surrealism, which became the fertile soil for building my own unique pictorial language.

In particular, the work of Bill Viola I encountered in the 1990s in New York led me to experience a new kind of painterly elation, much like a painting realized through video; while Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey instilled in me a faith in the “flash of artistic power” that transcends logical explanation. Recently, I have been finding fresh inspiration in the spatio-temporal sensations evoked by architect Peter Zumthor’s exploration of the essential relationship between space and materials. These influences, despite the difference in media, align with the destination I seek to reach through my work: touching upon fundamental sensations to allow an experience of the world beyond the everyday.

What challenges have you faced as an artist, and how have you overcome them?

Objectively speaking, the most challenging time for me was during my years in New York, struggling as a full-time artist. Looking back now, however, those years were not so much an ordeal to overcome as they were a precious experience gained through the lens of youth—a process of creating a solid foundation that allows me to sustain my life as an artist today.

For me, the true challenge comes not from external circumstances, but from internal stagnation. The greatest moments of crisis arise when I face the realization that my work may be stalling, falling into mannerism, or repeating itself out of mere habit.

Whenever I feel this sense of stagnation, I constantly question myself and intentionally seek out new conceptual dilemmas to stimulate my inner self. I deliberately step back from the canvas to expand my time for contemplation, utilizing that process of condensation as an essential journey for growth. I strive to perceive these difficulties not as obstacles to be defeated, but as a route to discovering and acquiring new artistic paths.

What do you hope people take away from your art when they experience it?

I have no desire to impose any specific interpretation on the audience. Rather, I hope that the subtle movements contained within the state of Equilibrium on my canvas might serve as an occasion for someone to pause and begin their own contemplation. I wish for viewers to briefly set aside their everyday notions and immerse themselves entirely in essential sensations that defy verbal explanation at the moment they encounter the work. I would be happy if my work could resonate with the latent memories within each viewer, leading them on their own unique sensory journey.

Text & photo courtesy of Sooyeoon Hong

Website: http://sooyeonhong.com
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