Youn Hye Sung

Youn Hye Sung was born in 1970 in Seoul, Korea. She studied fine arts throughout middle and high school, painting landscapes reminiscent of her childhood in Korea. “My father was a landscape gardener,” she mentions in passing. In 1995, she moved to Paris, spent a year studying linguistics, then enrolled at the Beaux-Arts in Marseille, where she stayed for three years. Today, she lives between France and Seoul, maintaining studios in both.

During her studies in the south of France, Youn Hye Sung became interested in shadow as a way to depict light in the negative. She began by painting the shadow of a chair, followed by self-portraits of her projected silhouette. Over time, plant life naturally emerged as a recurring motif. She experimented by tracing silhouettes, eagerly awaiting evening to outline on the ground the shapes of leaves cast onto the pavement.

Over the years, she has refined her technique, increasingly using photography and artificial light to multiply her ability to capture this fascinating phenomenon. She treats the canvas as a screen for a color synthesis. Layering more than ten coats of paint to create a background, she then reveals the form by subtracting it from this layered field.

Youn Hye Sung’s practice is cyclical. Shadows return at the end of each day. Time and again, a broad brush glides from top to bottom with a gesture honed by repetition. Revisited throughout her series, her motif is repeated in a reassuring echo until it becomes a form meant to be simply contemplated. In recent years, she has shifted toward more abstract works that unite opposing elements with a rare delicacy.