Artist: Jongsuk Yoon

Marian Goodman Gallery presents the first exhibition in New York of Jongsuk Yoon. On view are new paintings and works on paper which explore imagination and cultural memory through the invented topographies of past and present, in what the artist calls “landscapes of the soul.”

Yoon was born in South Korea where she spent her childhood in Onyang, prior to migrating to Germany in the mid 1990s, later studying painting at the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf from 1997-2001. Infused with an instinctual sensitivity to the harmony between humans and nature through traditions of East Asian landscape painting as absorbed from her childhood milieu, combined with those of European American modernism from her time in Europe, her profound absorption of these practices carries forward into her immersive landscapes. Yoon found freedom through painting in a singular practice of physical and meditative works where “intuition leads, unplanned and spontaneous, carried by color and gesture,” with impressions and actions taking precedence over mimetic observation. Often dispensing with orienting horizons or central points of view, she prioritizes simultaneity through large and open fields of color that allow for the temporal and gestural, rooting her work in poetic visions in harmony with nature. As Yoon says –“I don’t depict what I see, I am inside it. I act, responding to what the painting tells me” – and the work subsequently envelops the viewer within.

A series of large format paintings anchors the current exhibition in panoramic works such as May Landscape, Azalea, Spring Spring, and Mountains, which each surround the viewer with scale, infused by memories of azaleas in bloom and primeval zones of sky, cloud, streams and mountains. The works burst with dreamlike pink, red, and yellow hues that capture the reflections and sensations of a mountainous region of youth — aptly conjured rather than physically experienced — transporting us to the essence of springtime in Yoon’s spirit and heart. A metaphorical road in Spring Spring summons an illusory path towards an unknown journey within.

A series of medium scale works invite a slightly different journey towards the creation of half-abstract paintings, with regions delineated by their condensed formats, which render their chromatic relationships less tangible. In Sansu, June, Yellow Sea, Eine Wolke, The Mountain in Front, and in The Good Land we see a transition from ruminations on nature and reminiscence to tiered swaths of color that veer towards abstract compositions. “When painting smaller I think more about composition,” says Yoon.

A series of gouaches on paper feature the recurring brushmarks of her larger works, providing a space for a distinctly different emotional register, one that facilitates Yoon’s openness to the moment, away from cultural memory, searching for the empty space within. These works, Pink Landscape, Waves, Heat, and August Heat begin with swift and light gestures that remain in tune with Yoon’s call to a constant and immediate state of being.

Born in South Korea in 1965, Jongsuk Yoon moved to Europe in the early 1990s to study art at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under German conceptual artist Fritz Schwegler. After her studies, Yoon settled in Düsseldorf and focused her practice on drawings and paintings that hover in the space between figuration and abstraction. In works on paper, canvas, as well as directly on walls, Yoon creates charged and dreamlike color field landscapes that reflect her interests in these dual traditions. Yoon is the recent recipient of the Transfuge Art Prize for Best International Artist 2025.

Yoon is currently the subject of Kumgangsan, a solo exhibition at Mumok (Museum of Modern Art Ludwig Foundation), Vienna, Austria. Recent solo exhibitions include Sansu at Galerija Kula, Croatia (2025); Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover (2021); Nordiska Akvarellmuseet, Skärhamn (2020); Wall Paintings, Art Sonje Center, Seoul (2018); Museum Kurhaus Kleve (2017); and Osthaus Museum, Hagen (2015). Her works can be found in many public collections, including Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf; Sprengel Museum and Museum Ostwall, Dortmund, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover, Germany, among others.