Installation view
of 《Yoo Hyunmi: Hybrid Reality》 ©Kumho Museum of ArtKumho Museum of Art presents the solo exhibition
《Yoo Hyunmi: Hybrid Reality》 by
artist Yoo Hyunmi, through September 28.
This exhibition offers a comprehensive
survey of Yoo's multifaceted practice across media, genres, and themes,
encompassing her artistic trajectory from the early 2000s to the present.
Featuring photography, sculpture, and painting alongside poetry, fiction,
screenwriting, and short film, the exhibition highlights Yoo's expansive and
hybrid approach to visual and literary expression.
Installation view
of 《Yoo Hyunmi: Hybrid Reality》 ©Kumho Museum of ArtSince the early stages of her career, Yoo
Hyunmi (b. 1964) has explored the intersections of heterogeneous genres and
mediums—foregrounding the materiality and spatiality of sculpture, the realism
of photography, and the expressive potential of painting. Her works embrace the
tensions and frictions that emerge at the borders of disciplines, generating
multilayered visual structures and complex narrative forms.
《Yoo Hyunmi: Hybrid Reality》 brings together Yoo's representative bodies of work, tracing the
evolution of her inquiries and recontextualizing her artistic accomplishments.
Beginning with ‘Still Life,’ a photographic series from the early 2000s that
marked the starting point of her visual investigations, the exhibition moves
through ‘COSMOS,’ which evokes the structural logic of the universe through
everyday materials, and The Man Turned into Painting, a
short film combining process and performance.
Also on view is Physical
Numerics, a project inspired by literary texts that interprets
numbers through philosophical and sculptural lenses, presented in both
two-dimensional and installation formats. The exhibition culminates in Yoo's
recent ‘Ten Symbols of Longevity’ series, shown in dialogue with her earlier
‘Good Luck’ series from 2011, further expanding the breadth and depth of her practice
across time and media.
Installation view
of 《Yoo Hyunmi: Hybrid Reality》 ©Kumho Museum of ArtThe exhibition title, 《Hybrid Reality》, alludes to Yoo's
distinctive visual language, where photographs resemble paintings and paintings
mimic photographic realism—blurring the lines between reality and illusion.
Through a transdisciplinary and open-ended approach, Yoo probes the interstices
between image and substance, interior and exterior, fiction and reality. Her
symbolically rich compositions construct surreal yet precise worlds that prompt
reflection on the perceptual and philosophical dimensions of contemporary
experience.
By mapping Yoo Hyunmi's artistic journey
through hybrid forms and conceptual experimentation, this exhibition not only
encapsulates the artist's cumulative achievements but also proposes a renewed
way of seeing—one that invites viewers to engage with the generative space
between genres, meanings, and sensations. As the boundaries of visual language
dissolve, the exhibition opens up possibilities for new modes of perception,
interpretation, and imaginative thought.
