Kyung Youl Yoon 윤 경렬

BiographyKyung Youl Yoon is an artist dedicating his practice to the ‘Cubic Inception’ series of sculptural paintings, which respond to the climate change crisis and alienation in contemporary urban life. Yoon studied Painting, Sculpture, and Printmaking at the Facultad de Bellas Artes in Madrid, Spain, and held numerous exhibitions in the United States, Korea, China, and Spain since the 1980s, including the Shanghai Li Haisu Museum, Public Naeseorak Art Museum Korea, Seoul Arts Center Museum, Madrid National University of Spain, Queens Museum (Shades of Time, The Archive of Korean-American Artists, Part Two), and the Art Gallery at the Rockefeller State Park Preserve. While in Spain, Yoon participated in the group exhibition titled, "Este Y Complutense," which toured for 2 years and finished at The Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art (M.E.A.C), organized by Jose Marin-Medina. Since 2015, Yoon held solo exhibitions at the United Gallery in Korea (2015), the Sylvia Wald and Po Kim Gallery in NYC (2017), and the Galerie Bhak in Korea (2021), Kyung Youl Yoon: Cubic Inceptions & Mixed Media on Canvas 2, The Art Gallery at the Rockefeller State Park Preserve, NY (Curated by Audrey Leeds) (2022) and Kyung Youl Yoon: Cubic Inceptions & Mixed Media on Canvas 2, New York Hall of Science Museum, NY (2022-2023).
His works were also exhibited at Encounter Korea at the Southern Utah Museum of Art (SUMA) and the Project of First Encounter at the Korean Culture Center in Los Angeles, California. He has participated in the Art New York/Art Miami/Aspen/Art Palm Springs, Market Art + Design at the Bridgehampton Museum, Palm Beach, KIAF (Korea), and recently Art Market San Francisco. Yoon also exhibited at the Passion Connected 100 x 100 – Pyeong Chang Olympic 2018 Event, the Asia Week Special Exhibition, A Wave of Peace from the World Korean Cultural Center in New York, and many other venues. Yoons’ works are in the private and public collections of the Jeonnam Museum of Art (JMA), Public Inje Naeseorak Art Museum, a renowned hotel in Taiwan, Liu Haisu Art Museum in Shanghai, China Shanghai Embassy in China, Embassy in Madrid, Spain, Hangaram Art Museum Arts Center in Seoul, Korea, AnyTape Corporation in Korea, Korea’s Nordson’s Corporation, Casa de Reloi, Cultural Center in Madrid, Spain, Facultad de Bellas Artes in Spain, Cacabelos in Leon, Spain, Millennium Bank, Property Development Companies (NYC), NY.

Artist StatementWithin stacks of discarded waste, a glimmer of metal sparks an idea; even a disposed aluminum food container can become something entirely new. The transformative process begins, and cutting, flattening, and reshaping begin to birth new forms in various shapes and sizes. As these shapes are composed on a canvas, the arrangements create disorderly yet harmonious compositions, in my eyes reminiscent of a city. This depiction is unlike the perspective that we are accustomed to, but an abstracted perspective resonant with what we can see when we are above it all, like the glimmers of a city we see when we look down from an airplane. When the pieces are rearranged and the movement of the cubic pieces is manipulated once again, vast mountains form. When littered on a canvas painted with darkness, a milky way on a starry night appears. Applied in a dramatic ambience, luminous aurora streams appear on a lustrous night. When the cubic pieces are diffused to the periphery it can flicker like lonely stars in an early morning sky. It is like the pebble stones alongside a river, which although seemingly lifeless, they suddenly begin to carry meaning when you revisit them. I aspire, with the aluminum cubes that I make, to break the indifference of onlookers, to create an exchange where the viewer begins to look past the abstraction and meaningless to reflect on a new thought or idea that eliminates the obscurity in the forms and create personal meaning. From a simple lifestyle of the past, we have gradually adopted a contemporary lifestyle that embodies a complex compartmentalized way of thought. In a way, these cubes reflect this concept; the depiction of the city is comprised of the idea of its components, whether it is materialistic goods such as apartments, furniture, phones, or the wide spectrum of thoughts in our minds.

Website Kyung Youl Yoon