Yun-Hee Toh’s examination of the hidden beauty of the unfamiliar fragments of life and the unrevealed parts of phenomena have driven her artistic practice for the past thirty years. Her work has been connected to intrinsic qualities of individuals in their everyday lives and her paintings are relative to private confessions of the human existence on the things that cannot be seen but felt. Extracted from the core of the prosaic everyday life is a poetry that ponders upon fundamental questions on reality and existence.
Delicately composed line drawings are interwoven with oil paint rendered in dripping technique while the sense of depth is created by pencil drawings and multiple layers of varnish built upon each other resulting in unexpected outcomes. Such layering attempts to capture the instantaneous moment in relation to concepts of eternity. Through her organic subjects of water, sunlight, ice, honey, and dust, her work embodies the emotional and metaphoric depiction that is the façade of our lives or the original landscape of nature. Whereas serenity prevails on the surface, the inner content of her works reveals the pursuit of abounding ideas.
Toh has shown at the Galerie Beyeler in Basel, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea, Seoul Museum of Art, Sungkok Art Museum, Kumho Museum of Art, Art Sonje, Amore Pacific Campus, and OCI Museum amongst others.
Her works are in the public collections of, among others, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea, Seoul Museum of Art, World Bank, Washington DC, Philip Morris Art Collection, Art Sonje Seoul, Ilmin Museum Seoul, Kumho Museum, Sungok Museum Seoul, Kloster Schonthal Switzerland, and the University of Illinois Chicago.
[excerpted from Gallery Hyundai website: www.galleryhyundai.com]