featured artists
home travels with us
Trace the rhythm of home with artist, Seong Yoon Hong.
For Seong Yoon Hong, the rhythm of home is a pattern that threads through existence. It appears in the spirals of her fingerprints, the branching of rivers, and the ridges of her palm that pay tribute to the mountain ranges she has crossed. It is not a geographic constant, but exists in the quiet recognition of interconnectedness, an invisible force that links all things.
Seong Yoon’s work transforms this philosophy into a visual language. Her paintings, fluid and organic, reflect the drops, waves, spirals, and natural patterns that emerge in the world around us. These recurring forms act as meditations on belonging, emphasizing the underlying structures that hold true even in the midst of movement and change.
Having studied abroad in the United States, Seong Yoon was swept up in a Western worldview shaped by rationalism and empirical science. Returning to South Korea, she reconnected with a perspective rooted in balance and the appreciation of subjectivity. Her art now bridges these two influences, integrating logical precision with a deep admiration for the ephemeral. She sees this synthesis reflected in quantum physics, where deterministic and probabilistic realities coexist, much like the duality she explores in her work.
Her earlier pieces focused on systematic natural patterns observable at both cosmic and microscopic levels. More recently, she has shifted toward the human experience, exploring how individuals exist within these larger frameworks. Rather than depicting people as passive elements within an unyielding system, she positions them as dynamic participants; moving through, shaping, and being shaped by the spaces they inhabit.
In Seong Yoon’s ink pour and resin on hanji piece, Trinity (2019), she contemplates home as a relational construct rather than a physical space. Inspired by Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait, the piece examines how relationships create belonging. In the moment when two entities merge and a third is born, the couple itself transforms into a home for the third. This idea is universal, visible not just in human connections but across all forms of life.
Capricorns (2024) is a painting created with acrylic pours and detailed rendering. Here, instead of presenting a singular, symbolic goat, Seong Yoon portrays a landscape of them, each aligned with the star positions of Capricorn. While each goat ascends its own path, none are truly alone, highlighting the importance of individuality and shared experience. In this way, Seong Yoon interprets home as a presence that moves with us, found in the company of others embarking on their own unique journeys.
Movement is central to Seong Yoon’s artistic practice. She works with the natural flow of materials, allowing ink and paint to spread unpredictably. Drawing on the philosophy of yin and yang, she also captures the essence of movement within stillness, where change is not an endpoint but an ongoing cycle of becoming.
Seong Yoon’s art invites viewers to find home within themselves. Although places change and people come and go, there is a presence we transmit and an internal landscape that remains. Like a snail carrying its shell, home is something we embody, something we create with every step forward, and every quiet return to something we have always known.
