Sung Won Yun was born in 1977 in Seoul, Korea and works in New York City. She works to represent fundamental questions about homogenization of cultural, ecological, or geological process in the congeries of time in her art. Her art works include painting, drawing, photography, and mixed media. She received her Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Tufts University in 2010. She completed her BFA in 2000 and her Master of Fine Arts in painting 2003, both in Korea. She has had nine solo exhibitions, and participated in numerous group exhibitions internationally since 1999. She was awarded PLAYA Residency Fellowship in 2017, The Cooper Union Artist Residency at The Cooper Union School of Art in 2015, Traveling Scholarship from the School of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2012, artist residency program at the Helen Wurlitzer foundation in New Mexico (2013) and selected as an artist fellow of Terra Summer Residency in Giverny, France by Terra Foundation for American Art in 2010. She has won several awards including the first prize in Yousuf Karsh Prize in photography (2010). She traveled to Iceland (2009, 2011, 2017) and Norway (2012) for her photography projects, which inspired her new series of paintings.

STATEMENT:

My work traces the flow of subconsciousness through processes of layering, repetition, and accumulation. At its core, I aim to evoke a meditation on interior space – an exploration of the subconscious and emotional landscapes that lie beneath the surface of the everyday. The congregation of seemingly heterogenous microscopic organisms, or the Congeries, creates a homogenous, maximalist space that reveals images of co-existence – of serenity and dynamisms.  My works are created by hours, days, and months of repetition, which mimics the process of the Congeries. The surfaces of my paintings are built through a superposition of infinitesimal organic forms. As the layers accumulate, the meaning of each layer emerges and finds a new integration, pointing to a universal synthesis. At a distance, these works appear as cohesive, monochromatic fields, calm and meditative in their stillness. But, upon closer inspection, the homogeneous fields dissolve into countless minute shapes, gestures, and colors, each carrying its own meaning while contributing to the inseparable whole. This dual experience, of simultaneously perceiving both homogeneity and heterogeneity, mirrors the process of introspection. The superposition creates another dimension in the two-dimensional media that traces time and memory. Each line and layer becomes a record of time and attention, an inscription of presence.