Oil on canvas
65.1 x 91 cm
Unique Works
Certificate of Authenticity included
Yoon Soyeon’s Floating Thoughts is less a depiction of a scene and more a meditation on how thought drifts - formless, fleeting, quietly persistent. The work unfolds through a layered process: a photograph of the sea is printed, folded into a paper boat, then unfolded and re-photographed. From there, a paper airplane takes flight across its textured surface. This is not mere play - it is choreography of memory, rhythm, and imagination. What we see is not the sea itself, but the memory of it, reconfigured and reframed. The creases of the folded photo become visual scars - marks of time and touch, like emotions folded and unfolded across the landscape of the mind. Geometry enters here, too: squares and triangles emerge not as rigid forms, but as moments of pause, fragments of thought suspended in motion. The paper airplane that soars across this sea of impressions is an ephemeral gesture - a metaphor for the way thoughts wander without landing. It is both an extension of the artist’s hand and a symbol of detachment: a longing to fly, to observe from above, to be unbound for just a moment. Beneath the surface calm, a quiet tension stirs. The sea seems still, but the air hums with the energy of unspoken feelings. Yoon’s palette remains restrained, her brushwork patient, allowing form and concept to breathe in tandem. The result is a canvas that feels both intimate and spacious, like a journal entry that chose not to use words. She does not seek to define emotion but rather to chart its drift - how it folds, expands, hovers, and eventually settles. In Floating Thoughts, the viewer is not given a destination. Instead, we are offered a kind of inner weather - a space where one’s own thoughts might begin to float, quietly echoing the artist’s. 한글번역: 윤소연의 작품은 언제나 일상과 감정, 물성과 사유의 경계를 넘나드는 조용한 실험이다. 〈떠다니는 생각〉 또한 그러하다. 이 작업은 단지 바다를 그린 풍경화가 아니다. 그것은 바다라는 이미지, 바다라는 감정, 바다라는 기억을 겹겹이 쌓고 다시 해체하며 재조립하는 감각의 구조이자 사유의 항로이다. 작업의 출발은 ‘찍힌’ 바다다. 이는 이미 한 차례 현실로부터 분리된 감각이다. 그 바다는 다시 종이배로 접히고, 펼쳐지고, 다시 촬영되어 다시 인화된다. 평면은 주름지고, 곧 조형이 된다. 시간과 감정이 얽히고, 기억은 구겨졌다가 다시 펼쳐진다. 여기에서 중요한 것은, 그 ‘구김’이 곧 작가의 내면을 반영하는 하나의 언어가 된다는 점이다. 그리고 그 위에 종이비행기를 날린다. 물리적으론 존재하지 않지만, 화면 위의 상상 속 비행은 또 다른 차원의 시점을 제공한다. 종이배 위에 날아다니는 종이비행기—이 조합은 무척 가볍고 유희적으로 보이지만, 그 이면에는 떠도는 생각들, 방향을 정하지 못한 마음의 움직임이 담겨 있다. 이때 바다는 단순한 배경이 아니라, 감정이 흘러가는 심상의 공간이 된다. 〈떠다니는 생각〉은 제목처럼 고정되지 않는다. 하나의 생각은 다시 다른 생각으로, 하나의 형태는 다시 다른 구조로 흐르고 확장된다. 정사각형과 삼각형으로 쪼개진 바다의 면들은 단지 시각적 해체가 아니라, 감정의 조각들이자 기억의 흔적이다. 윤소연의 회화가 특별한 이유는 그것이 기억을 직접적으로 재현하지 않으면서도, 감정의 ‘방식’을 오롯이 보여준다는 점이다. 이 작품은 말하자면, 한 사람의 내면이 어떻게 움직이고, 어떻게 모이고, 어떻게 떠다니다가 다시 가라앉는지를 조용하게 관찰하게 만든다. 그 바다 위에서, 당신의 생각도 어디쯤을 떠다니고 있을 것이다. 그조차도 작가는 알고 있다. 그래서 그녀는 묻지 않고, 대신 ‘그림’을 건넨다.
Yoon Soyeon’s paintings draw our attention to what we so often overlook: the quiet companions of daily life - delivery boxes, paper shopping bags, hand-folded paper planes. These modest objects, familiar to the point of invisibility, become transformed in her hands into something tender and strangely expansive. Her work does not seek drama or spectacle. Instead, it offers a delicate choreography of space and emotion - composed, restrained, but emotionally resonant. The spaces she constructs on canvas are not fixed interiors or defined exteriors. Rather, they are elastic rooms of feeling: containers of memory, stillness, and private reverie. A paper box in her work may be a room, a window, or a sea; it may hold the weight of routine or the lift of a fleeting dream. 한글번역: Using oil paint - a medium that rewards patience - Yoon builds her images slowly, allowing thought and feeling to collect between layers. Her preference for this slow-drying medium mirrors the pace of her inner rhythm. Painting becomes a space not of performance but of listening; not of resolution but of ongoing attention. There is an understated symbolism at play. The recurring presence of boxes and bags - fragile, temporary, and portable - becomes a metaphor for emotional containment and spatial possibility. They are at once grounded and nomadic, soft structures through which the artist navigates both the self and the outside world. Central to Yoon’s artistic philosophy is a quiet inquiry, often unspoken but persistent: Am I content? Am I still in love with this work? How long can I go on painting? These questions are not declarations of doubt but rituals of reflection - moments of pause that have accompanied her for more than two decades as a working artist. Her recent projects show an expanding horizon. The introduction of nature—sky, forest, sea - and elements like paper boats and airplanes suggest a desire not to escape, but to breathe. Her world remains rooted in the everyday, but her gaze reaches outward, gently. The box is still here, but now it contains wind. For Yoon, painting is not a means of escape from anxiety - it is a way of holding it, tending to it, allowing it to soften over time. Her work does not shout, but it stays. And in that staying, there is warmth, generosity, and a quiet resilience. If, in front of one of her paintings, a viewer finds themself smiling - softly, for no reason at all - then perhaps the painting has already done its work.