Hyangro Yoon (b. 1986) explores the possibilities of abstract painting through a wide array of contemporary imagery drawn from popular culture, including animation. Under the self-coined concept of “Pseudo Painting,” Yoon has developed a unique artistic practice. 

Building on this approach, Yoon focuses on the technical aspects of how contemporary images are produced and consumed. The artist transforms various elements found in pop culture and art historical references using digital imaging tools such as Photoshop, translating them into the medium of painting.

One of the most representative examples of Yoon’s practice is the ‘Screenshot’ (2017) series, in which specific scenes from Japanese animation are captured as screenshots and digitally altered using software such as Photoshop before being translated into painting. While Yoon’s earlier works focused on the flatness of painting, the ‘Screenshot’ series marks a shift toward exploring abstraction that traverses both digital and analog realms.

This body of work originates from scenes in popular Japanese “magical girl” animations, particularly moments when the protagonist undergoes transformation or engages in battle, emitting bursts of energy or aura. These scenes are digitally manipulated multiple times until the original imagery becomes unrecognizable, transforming into abstract forms. Once captured as a screenshot, the image becomes an independent subject, which is further abstracted through repeated cropping and magnification in Photoshop.
 
The resulting new forms are then transferred onto canvas not with a traditional brush, but using an airbrush, a technique that closely mimics the surface qualities of digital imagery.

In the earlier stages of the series, Hyangro Yoon applied Photoshop effects uniformly across the entire image after taking a screenshot. However, in the works presented at her 2017 solo exhibition 《Liquid Rescale》 at DOOSAN Gallery New York, she began selectively cropping and editing only specific parts of the captured scenes.
 
Yoon describes this process as “a journey of tracing the image.” This method of choosing particular imagery and manipulating it through digital editing programs mirrors the contemporary processes by which images are produced and consumed today.

Through the processes of replicating, deconstructing, and reassembling images selected from digital media, Hyangro Yoon’s painterly experiments distinguish themselves from traditional abstract expressionism or so-called “painterly painting.” Her practice of Pseudo Painting extends the boundaries of conventional painting, tracing images that endlessly circulate, manipulated and duplicated in today’s digital environment, and capturing the visual landscape of our time.
 
Furthermore, Yoon pays close attention to the boundaries formed when different media within art, or different cultures within broader cultural categories, mimic or hybridize one another. For instance, her ‘Screenshot’ series has evolved beyond the traditional format of canvas to include diverse media such as sculpture, carpets, and light boxes.

In her 2020 solo exhibition 《Canvases》 at Hakgojae, Hyangro Yoon connected art historical references with narratives from her personal life, constructing what could be seen as a self-portrait through painting. The ‘Canvases’ series used pivotal moments from her own life as catalysts for creation, linking them to excerpts from a book on the work of Helen Frankenthaler, a key figure of the previous generation’s abstract expressionist movement.

Having long been interested in the layers and flatness of painting, Hyangro Yoon expanded her inquiry into three-dimensional space in this series. Before producing the works, the artist created a “digital mapping image” that enveloped all the interior walls of Hakgojae’s main building, effectively constructing a virtual canvas that encompassed the entire exhibition space.
 
From this imagined environment, Yoon extracted small image fragments from the virtual walls. Based on standardized canvas dimensions and screen aspect ratios, she derived 17 different formats and over 100 fragments. These were printed onto actual canvas fabric and installed in their corresponding locations within the gallery space.

In her painting practice, Hyangro Yoon engages in a process of re-referencing—excerpting instances where Helen Frankenthaler referenced classical painting and then reinterpreting those through her own painterly language. The artist printed words related to painting or female pronouns (such as "She," "her") found on the extracted pages onto the canvas, then overlaid them with drawings connected to her own life.
 
Each layer of the image reveals a different narrative and mode of expression, resembling a temporal map in which three distinct “screenshots” are superimposed—capturing moments from an earlier generation of artists, through to Yoon’s own lived experience.
 
Examining the layers more closely: the foundational layer is the excerpted page from another’s historical record; atop this, Yoon adds a painted surface using an airbrush; and finally, the outermost layer features drawings based on the scribbles of children, rendered in oil bar.

The cryptic titles are combinations of an emoticon representing a self-portrait, a shape indicating the installation wall, and a number denoting the canvas size. For example, ː)◆10F-3 (2020) means the third canvas of size ‘10F’ hung on the wall represented by ‘◆’.
 
Each painting maintains its independence as an individual work while also forming an interconnected relationship with the others. For instance, a blue rectangle commonly appears on several canvases. This phenomenon originated from the mapping process, where the software caused the same image to appear on different walls. The artist materialized this “common denominator” area as a translucent blue layer, revealing the structure and connectivity among the canvases.

The ‘Tagging’ series, which Hyangro Yoon has been developing since 2022, was inspired by the first-generation graffiti technique of “tagging” from ancient Roman times, where one’s name was inscribed on buildings. Tagging signifies the creator’s signature but also refers today to the act of overlaying locations, places, or people onto one’s own territory through social media.
 
In this work, Yoon sprays paint onto the canvas like graffiti and “tags” the referenced experiences of time and space, bringing them onto the canvas. The paint particles layered on the canvas evoke the artist’s physical actions, the materiality of the paint, and the coexistence of past and present spatiotemporal experiences, creating a multilayered composition.
 
In the solo exhibition 《Tagging》, held at both Hall1 and CYLINDER, the artist adapted the series to the architectural characteristics of each space. The works shown at Hall1 took the form of large-scale flat paintings resembling massive walls or masses, while the pieces exhibited at CYLINDER existed like structural elements within the space.

The surface of the work Tagging-H (2022), exhibited at Hall1, features faintly arranged letters appearing between dark layers of the canvas. To read the blurred alphabets etched across the vast surface, viewers must move their bodies and closely examine the piece from different angles.
 
The barely decipherable sentence is a graffiti found on a wall in ancient Pompeii, meaning, “I admire this wall that has not yet collapsed despite the boredom of many who wrote on it.” This phrase, originating from the distant spatiotemporal context of ancient Pompeii, is detached from its original meaning through the artist’s act of tagging, transformed into a painterly code, and intertwined with heterogeneous elements.

In her recent solo exhibition 《Mirae》 (Mirae Building, 2024), Yoon presented a ceiling mural depicting a mingling of time and a future landscape yet to come. The painting Mirae: Map for Sky and Roots (2024), installed to fit the architectural structure of the ceiling, features a layered surface combining inkjet-printed layers on canvas with airbrushed paint, consistent with her previous works.
 
Through this process, she joined 26 canvases on the ceiling to create a single cohesive image. Covering the slanted ceiling of the building, the work evokes the impression of a night sky embroidered with stars. She invited viewers to freely gaze upward at the artwork from any position, aided by the use of bean bag chairs provided in the space.

This work originated from a photograph of caves taken by the artist during a research trip to Okinawa in the summer of 2023. The photos depict two caves, Chibichiri Gama and Shimuku Gama, which hold memories from World War II. Both caves served as shelters for local residents, but while those in Chibichiri Gama chose death, the residents of Shimuku Gama chose life.
 
Reflecting on the phrase the artist discovered while learning about the history of the caves—“What was it that separated life and death?”—she connected this question to a future yet to come. In her work, the caves become a boundary between life and death as well as a bridge linking the past and the future.

The artist shares a sense of the elusive future—something out of reach—through the physical act of looking up at the sky. Positioned between the boundaries of life and death, and drawing the future from the past, her work invites us to imagine countless possible futures that cannot be confined to a linear timeline. 

In this way, Hyangro Yoon layers the contemporary landscape within her canvases by moving fluidly between the physical gestures of painting and the methods of digital image creation. Her "pseudo-paintings" go beyond simply referring to painting as a medium; they re-mediate the complex web of elements entangled both inside and outside the artist’s world, allowing us to envision a multi-layered narrative.

 "Painting is a screenshot of the world."   (Hyangro Yoon, from the Hakgojae 《Canvases》 leaflet) 

Hyangro Yoon received her B.F.A. in painting from Hongik University and M.F.A. in Fine Arts from Korea National University of Arts. Her recent 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.
 
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).
 
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). 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.

References

• 윤향로, Hyangro Yoon (Artist Website)
• 금천예술공장, [금천예술공장 15기 입주작가] 윤향로
• 캔파운데이션, 2023 명륜동작업실 – 윤향로 (CAN Foundation, 2023 Myeongnyundong Studio - Hyangro Yoon)
• 두산아트센터, Liquid Rescale (DOOSAN Art Center, Liquid Rescale)
• 학고재, [보도자료] 캔버스들 (Hakgojae, [Press Release] Canvases)
• 뉴스프링프로젝트, 언박싱프로젝트 – 윤향로 작가 소개 (New Spring Project, Unboxing Project – Hyangro Yoon)
• 퍼블릭아트, 윤향로_태깅
• 퍼블릭아트, 윤향로_Mirae