Bae Yoon Hwan explores the possibilities for storytelling, unfolding personal experiences, fables, mythology, and social and political issues across uncanny paintings, videos, and installations.
Read MoreBae Yoon Hwan graduated with a BFA from Seowon University, Cheongju, in 2008. In 2011, he gained his MFA from Kyungwon University, Seongnam.
Bae Yoon Hwan pieces together narratives from a vast range of internal and external sources, with resulting works relaying an uncanny, indeterminate form of storytelling. His interests range from art history and literature, to emotion, internal conflict, and the contemporary human condition. Often juxtaposing fantastical or unsettling characters and settings with elements of humour or absurdity, Bae merges divergent universes in unpredictable ways.
Bae works across drawing, painting, printing, and animation, and experiments with various artistic processes including automatism.
Bae's bold, experimental paintings are composed of rhythmic strokes of oil, oil pastel, or acrylic paint in vivid, glossy colours. His subjects often include animals and anthropomorphic forms.
Bae continuously investigates the possibilities for painting, breaking through the convention of the singular canvas and developing outsized two-dimensional painting installations.
Bae's monumental painting WAS IT A CAT I SAW? (2014) was presented as part of the artist's first solo exhibition of the same title at Insa Art Space, Seoul. Standing at 50 metres wide and over two metres high, the work unfolded several fantastical fable-inspired scenes across multiple panels, as though part of a large-scale fairy tale book—embodying Bae's captivating imagination and capacity for visual and non-linear storytelling.
Bae's stop-motion animation Road to Studio B (2018) exemplifies the hybridised nature of the artist's practice, combining drawing, sculpture, painting, and film. Commissioned by Seoul Museum of Art, the nearly twelve-minute-long video explores the journey of 'B' to a new studio—indexing Bae's storytelling around artistic production and practice. Road to Studio B considers the artist's studio as both a physical space, and metaphorically as a state of mind.
Bae Yoon Hwan has presented work in solo and group exhibitions internationally.
Select solo exhibitions include What? In My Back Yard?!, Gallery Baton, Seoul (2022); Lobster Quadrille, Chapter II Yard, Seoul (2020); At the Old Ball Game, DOOSAN Gallery, New York (2018); Breathing Island, Gallery Baton, Seoul (2017); WAS IT A CAT I SAW?, Insa Art Space, Seoul (2014).
Select group exhibitions include Indexing the Nature: From Near and Far Away, No.9 Cork Street, London (2022); The Poetic Collection, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul (2022); Cygnus Loop, Gallery Baton, Seoul (2019); and Digital Promenade, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul (2018), among others.
Bae Yoon Hwan was a finalist at the 36th JoongAng Art Competition, held in Seoul in 2014.
Bae has participated in several artist residencies worldwide, including the MMCA Residency Goyang, Gyeonggi (2021); DOOSAN Residency, New York (2018); SeMa Nanji Residency, Seoul (2016); and Col Art Studio, Beijing (2011), among others.
Bae Yoon Hwan's works have been collected by renowned South Korean institutions, including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; Seoul Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art Busan; Daegu Art Museum; and Doosan Yonkang Foundation, Seoul; among others.
Valentina Buzzi | Ocula | 2022
