Sung Won Yun was born in Seoul, Korea and works in New York City. She is a visual artist working across painting, drawing, photography, and mixed media. Her art practice traces subconscious and emotional landscapes through rigorous processes of layering, repetition, and accumulation. By superimposing infinitesimal organic forms, she creates cohesive, monochromatic fields where micro-scale organisms induce macro-scale synthesis, exploring the simultaneous perception of homogeneity and heterogeneity.

Yun has had thirteen solo exhibitions at venues including Anderson Yezerski Gallery (2026), Harold J. Miossi Art Gallery (2025), Howard Yezerski Gallery (2021), and Helen J Gallery (2021). She has also presented four two-person exhibitions, including at the Katonah Museum of Art, alongside numerous international group exhibitions.

She received her Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in affiliation with Tufts University (2010) after completing her Bachelor and Master of Fine Arts in painting in Korea (2000, 2003). Her honors include First Prize in the Yousuf Karsh Prize in Photography (2010), the PLAYA Residency Fellowship (2017), The Cooper Union Artist Residency (2015), the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation Residency (2013), SMFA Traveling Scholarship (2012), and Terra Summer Residency Fellowship (2010).

STATEMENT:

My work traces the flow of subconsciousness through processes of layering, repetition, and accumulation. At its core, I aim to evoke a meditation on interior space – an exploration of the subconscious and emotional landscapes that lie beneath the surface of the everyday. The congregation of seemingly heterogenous microscopic organisms, or the Congeries, creates a homogenous, maximalist space that reveals images of co-existence – of serenity and dynamisms.  My works are created by hours, days, and months of repetition, which mimics the process of the Congeries. The surfaces of my paintings are built through a superposition of infinitesimal organic forms. As the layers accumulate, the meaning of each layer emerges and finds a new integration, pointing to a universal synthesis. At a distance, these works appear as cohesive, monochromatic fields, calm and meditative in their stillness. But, upon closer inspection, the homogeneous fields dissolve into countless minute shapes, gestures, and colors, each carrying its own meaning while contributing to the inseparable whole. This dual experience, of simultaneously perceiving both homogeneity and heterogeneity, mirrors the process of introspection. The superposition creates another dimension in the two-dimensional media that traces time and memory. Each line and layer becomes a record of time and attention, an inscription of presence.