Miryu Yoon (b.1991) begins her work by drawing from the emotions and sensations she experiences while observing and encountering ordinary subjects. She explores ways to capture and construct fragments centered around figures, organizing them within the pictorial space. Through this process, she translates the intimate and abstract sensibilities evoked by familiar subjects into a painterly language.

Yoon’s early works stemmed from observing ordinary individuals. After completing graduate school, she briefly worked at an art studio that also operated as a photo studio. There, she encountered a variety of personal images brought in by customers, prompting her to reflect on the personal narratives intertwined with these images and how they influenced their significance. 

This experience led Yoon to engage in purposeless observation and imagination of her surroundings. She began focusing on how the people around her interacted with their environments, including the spaces they inhabited and the objects that surrounded them.

Miryu Yoon’s early series, ‘The Studio’ (2020–2021), captures a carpenter couple and their workshop, whom she observed while spending three days with them in Dublin, Ireland. She first documented moments of their daily life through photography, then translated the familiar yet uncanny sensations evoked by these captured fragments onto canvas with her brush.

Since 2021, Miryu Yoon has moved beyond mere observation of subjects, actively intervening in moments by staging and directing them. This shift became more pronounced in her series ‘Dripping Wet’ (2021), where she assigned specific roles and scenarios to acquaintances, captured these orchestrated scenes through photography, and then translated them onto canvas.

In this series, Yoon gradually narrowed the distance between herself and her subjects. Initially observing people from afar, she eventually transitioned to directly positioning them within her compositions. Regarding this staged approach, she describes the figures in her paintings as both “intermediaries that visually materialize my sensations and imagery” and “alibis for painterly experimentation and events.”
 
By exploring the intersection between her imagined scenarios and the real individuals enacting them, Yoon delves into the possibilities of how these fictional sensations can manifest through embodied forms.

At this stage, Yoon carefully selects backgrounds, objects, clothing, and props to amplify the sensations she seeks to convey, meticulously considering color and materiality. She then transforms these staged scenes into images using an iPhone, often utilizing the Live Photo function. 

By capturing 1.5 seconds before and after the moment of the shot, the Live Photo function merges the meticulously staged composition with chance elements such as light, temperature, fleeting expressions, and subtle movements, creating a dynamic interplay between the intentional and the accidental.

In her 2022 solo exhibition 《B-hyeong Bi-yeom Gwi-yeom》 at Sahang-up Gallery, Miryu Yoon encounters another world— the world of performance. The paintings presented in this exhibition were inspired by performative actions that generated momentary movements. These movements, originally existing as a sequence of fleeting gestures, were reconfigured into singular scenes upon encountering the flat surface of the canvas. 

The motions captured through Yoon’s perspective escape their original timeline, remaining fixed in a state of stillness while still implying movement. As painting inherently strips performance of its temporal nature, the narrative that would have unfolded over time becomes disoriented, suspended in an ambiguous state.

Instead of adhering to a linear narrative, the moments of performance acquire a new texture through the interplay of captured colors and the rhythm of brushstrokes. In the ‘Ambush’ (2022) and ‘He’s Getting Too Clingy’ (2022) series, blue dominates the canvas, standing out almost like a color field. However, the quality of blue varies in each painting—sometimes smooth, sometimes damp—reflecting the atmosphere and environment of the moment, evoking its fleeting sensory texture.

Miryu Yoon’s paintings capture fleeting sensory moments that emerge under specific environmental conditions, using figures and objects as intermediaries. The works are primarily centered around figures, but rather than focusing on the detailed depiction of the individuals themselves, it is the incidental sensory qualities created by the moment—such as the folds of clothing, reflections of light, and the color tones—that stand out.

Art Critic Hyosil Yang also interprets Yoon’s paintings as “a practice of painterliness rather than depictions of figures.” By placing familiar people in new situations, Yoon uses them as intermediaries to conduct an aesthetic experiment—translating the intersection of reality and fiction into painting through ephemeral sensory impressions.

At her solo exhibition 《Pyromaniac》 (2023) at SeMA Storage, Miryu Yoon deepened her experimental approach, using figures as intermediaries to imagine narratives unfolding through specific scenes and characters. To capture the characters she created, Yoon gave various directions to the subjects, who responded by adjusting their movements and expressions according to her requests. 

Through this process, real individuals performed as fictional entities, generating a third, hybrid figure. Observing this transformation, Yoon translated the fleeting intersection of reality and fiction into painting. In this exhibition, her paintings were installed within wooden frames sized to match the gestures and proportions of the figures or displayed horizontally, resembling an extended Live Photo frame, sequentially presenting traces of momentary movements.

At her solo exhibition 《Do Wetlands Scare You?》 (2024) at FOUNDRY SEOUL, Miryu Yoon presented painted scenes staged around the symbolic space of a swamp. The scenes in her paintings are inspired by Nordic myths, focusing on witches associated with the destructive forces of swampy landscapes.

Swamps, with their eerie and gloomy atmosphere, have long served as the backdrop for various folk tales and myths, often inhabited by spirits, fairies, monsters, or ghosts that threaten humans. These spiritual beings are typically depicted as luring humans into the water, leading them to death.

Rather than viewing these beings as simply evil spirits or witches that harm humans without reason, Yoon explores their complex contexts, delving into their power and mystery. Through this exploration, she aims to reveal a new aspect of mythology, presenting three women within the swamp as central figures in a reimagined narrative.

In this exhibition, the paintings take on a more narrative and densely staged approach compared to her previous works. While her earlier paintings created a vibrant, lively surface through the properties of the paint, these new works evoke a strange atmosphere with a murky, sticky, and seemingly fluid texture, creating a mysterious feeling.

The three women in the paintings are depicted in the water, holding hands, embracing each other, or gazing at either the viewer or one another. The surface of the paintings vividly reflects the undulating waves of their movements, creating the sensation of being drawn into a mirage-like trance.

However, unlike traditional myths that lead to death, these paintings do not lead in that direction. With heavy brushstrokes layered thickly on the canvas, Yoon's works continuously ignite the spark of life, offering alluring clues toward a new narrative that the viewers can imagine.

In this way, Miryu Yoon explores the intersection where fictional beings and sensations converge with real people, seeking various possibilities for how these can be realized as embodied entities. By placing figures in specific situations and settings, moving between digital photography and canvas surfaces to stage different physical forms, and then organizing them onto the canvas, Yoon tests and imagines other species within alternative environments and structures.

Through these portrait works, Yoon ignites the spark of new narratives that can endlessly expand within the viewer's imagination. This moves beyond simply observing the form of the figure represented in the painting, leading the viewer toward a personal and abstract experience.

"Through them, I try to capture the facets I discover in them, and the way they wish to reveal themselves through me." (Miryu Yoon, Artist's Note)

Miryu Yoon completed her BA in Art History and Theory and BFA in Painting at Hongik University, followed by an MFA in Painting from Seoul National University. Her solo exhibitions include 《Do Wetlands Scare You?》 (FOUNDRY SEOUL, Seoul, 2024), 《Pyromaniac》 (SeMA Storage, Seoul, 2022), 《Double Weave》 (Space Cadalogs, Seoul, 2022), 《B-hyeong Bi-yeom Gwi-yeom》 (Sahng-up Gallery, Seoul, 2021), and 《Not Walking at a Consistent Pace》 (Plan C, Jeonju, 2021).

Yoon has participated in notable group exhibitions such as 《Sparks》 (Pipe Gallery, Seoul, 2024), 《K90-99》 (L.U.P.O., Milan, 2023), 《Result Exhibition》 (Factory of Contemporary Arts in Palbok, Jeonju, 2022), 《MATCH BOX Edition 1. Duo X》 (Artplug Yeonsu, Incheon, 2022), 《Jeonbuk Youth 2022》 (Jeonbuk Museum of Art, Wanju, 2022), and more.

Yoon has also been an artist-in-residence at SeMA Nanji Residency (2024), Seoul Art Space Geumcheon (2023), Factory of Contemporary Arts in Palbok (2022), and Artplug Yeonsu (2021). Her works are held in collections at the Government Art Bank in Korea, Incheon Foundation for Arts and Culture, and Jeonbuk Museum of Art.

References

• 윤미류, Miryu Yoon (Artist Website)
• 금천예술공장, 윤미류 (Seoul Art Space Geumcheon, Miryu Yoon)
• 인천문화통신 3.0, 윤미류 인터뷰 (IFCNEWS 3.0, Miryu Yoon Interview) 
• 상업화랑, B형 비염 귀염 (Sahang-up Gallery, B-hyeong Bi-yeom Gwi-yeom)
• 이진실, 암류(暗流)로서의 포토제닉 (Jinshil Lee, The Photogenic as an Undercurrent) 
• 파운드리, Do Wetlands Scare You? (FOUNDRY, Do Wetlands Scare You?) 
• 양효실, 인물화 안 수행적 회화
• 박가희, 당신이 보고 있는 것은 인물일까요? —회화적 실험을 위한 도구로서의 인물