New Paintings — Woo Byoung Yun

Artist Statement: Titled Non-reification, this collection reflects my desire to portray human existence through the intangible. Drawing from the Frankfurt School’s concept of reification — particularly the process by which human relationships are commodified and individuals are reduced to functional, even replaceable, entities — these paintings strive to go beyond the realm of the material and engage in the sensorial. Non-reification reveals a world not through visible form, but through resonance — intimate, invisible, and vibrational.

In a society that is increasingly shaped by objectification and commodification, my works prompt the viewers to reflect on the immaterial and energetic dimensions of being. Like light, which exhibits particle- and wave-like characteristics, we, too, exist simultaneously in the phenomenal and the energetic. In this series, I want viewers to attune themselves to the resonances of presence — to perceive being as vibration, not form.

In this sense, these paintings can be seen as portraits — portraits rendered of waves.