Seojeong Nam is a Korean artist based in New York whose practice explores movement, repetition, and resonance as visual structures. Trained in painting in Korea and currently studying Fine Arts in New York, she expands painting through collage, sculptural materials, and print-based processes.

For Nam, art is a form of “research through sensation.” Her work attempts to materialize fleeting states of becoming — moments when forms emerge, dissolve, or shift. Drawing from poetic rhythm, she explores how repetition and variation generate resonance across materials, forms, and space. Her recent works examine the tension between organic forms and mechanical processes. Through hand-cut stencil techniques and layered materials, traces of human labor intersect with systems of repetition and structure, constructing environments where structure and fluidity coexist.

Nam received her BFA in Painting from Hongik University. Her major exhibitions include the solo show Pull and Bind (RE:PLAT, 2023) and numerous group exhibitions, including Words Filling the Voids (Everyart, 2025) and Middle Note Guide (C-Square, 2023).

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

When people ask when I first dreamed of becoming an artist, I often answer, “as far back as I can remember.” It sounds cliché, but it is true. I followed a conventional path — attending an art middle school, an art high school, and later majoring in painting in college. Because of this, I tend to rephrase the question for myself: what made me certain that art could become my lifelong work? Why did a childhood dream continue into adulthood, even becoming tied to my economic life?

For me, art is a form of “research through sensation.” I believe art matters because it offers an unfamiliar experience of thinking through sensation within a world structured by language and systems. I once encountered artworks that artworks that resisted translation into language, yet were overwhelmingly present. That experience left a deep impact on me. The desire to create such experiences has made me continue as an artist.

After graduating from a painting program in Korea, I participated in various exhibitions for two years. However, I felt limited by remaining only within painting, so I transferred to the BFA Fine Arts program in New York as a junior, where I study sculpture, printmaking, and other media. Breaking apart and rebuilding the visual language I once relied on has been both painful and joyful.

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

Previously, I was interested in visualizing “movement” as a formal language in painting. Through titles that used verbs and adverbs — such as “turning over” or “climbing” — I attempted paintings that, while physically still, could suggest movement beyond the surface. When multiple paintings were exhibited together, I hoped they could be experienced spatially, almost like a panorama.

Since coming to New York, I have combined collage and sculptural materials such as wood and thread, exploring the rhythm and formal relationships that emerge beyond traditional painting materials. I approach my methodology in a playful yet instinctive way, attempting experiments that can be both light and serious.

I am drawn to how visual elements such as plane, line, and color transform through materials, textures, and repetition. When these variations accumulate, they create what I think of as a “visual adventure,” or a “visual narrative.” Ultimately, I want to fix into material the fleeting moment of movement — when something is becoming, or when something formed begins to dissolve.

You often describe your work in terms of poetry and rhythm. How do you translate these literary and musical concepts into visual forms?

I believe repetition and variation are essential to poetry and rhythm. In traditional forms such as sonnets, haiku, or classical Korean poetry, similar sounds repeat and transform. Rhythm emerges when similarity contains difference. When repetition becomes identical, it loses its vitality. What matters is where repetition shifts.

I experiment with this in my visual language. Books and LP records recur as materials, transforming through cutting, drawing lines, or staining. Their arrangement remains fluid; the same work reads differently depending on its placement in space.

In painting, I repeat similar forms while varying color and transparency. Forms that appear similar yet slightly different resonate across the surface. I think of this as resonance — not only of sound, but of images, materials, and memories overlapping within one space. Through this repetition and flexibility, I attempt to create a “visual poem.” There is a rule, but the gaps within it allow uniqueness to emerge.

Can you describe a recent project or artwork that you are particularly proud of?

Recently, I have experimented with stencil-based painting. It resembles silkscreen, yet differs from both the flatness of silkscreen and the gestural quality of brushwork. I cut shapes into vinyl and fill them with paint or gel medium using a palette knife or squeegee. By cutting and filling these shapes myself, the trembling and imperfections of human labor become embedded, while the movement feels both mechanical and bodily at once.

The shapes are arbitrary and organic — like lightning or waves — yet they are repeated through manual labor that imitates mechanical production. There is tension between form and method. In the painting, this tension does not reveal itself immediately; it emerges through quiet observation. I am interested in relationships that emerge without being declared.

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

I have struggled with naming or systematizing my work. Once named, complex ideas can feel translated and fixed within a system. I see the creative process as ongoing change that resists categorization. Yet as an artist, one must sometimes be positioned within systems.

Over time, I realized that naming and resisting naming exist in dialogue. Fluidity emerges in resistance to structure, and structure makes fluidity visible. The artist stands between these two conditions. Naming does not only restrict imagination; it can also make it possible to move beyond it. Without structure, resistance risks becoming arbitrary. I am learning to remain in that tension.

What projects are you currently working on, and what can we expect from you in the future?

Recently, I have simplified visual elements such as color and form. When the language becomes simpler, the methodology becomes more visible, and painting begins to feel sculptural. It recalls aspects of Korean Dansaekhwa, though my approach emphasizes transformation and variation.

I hope my work becomes more concise — not to emphasize visual pleasure alone, but to reveal the structure and logic that produce form. I am interested in how process and result can become inseparable.

I am also exploring silkscreen as a methodology, and how it can intersect with painting. I want to move beyond reproduction or minor variation, and instead pursue expansion, embrace failure, and serious yet humorous challenges. By articulating this intention in writing, I trust it will guide my work forward.

Text and photo courtesy of Seojeong Nam

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