Invisible Architecture of Human mind

Painting, for me, is not a window onto the world but a structure through which the invisible becomes tangible. My practice investigates the architecture of the human mind—its memories, emotions, and fragmented perceptions—through the material language of abstraction. I work with transparent layers of resin, traditional Korean hanji paper, ink, and fabric to build what I think of as visual sediments of time and consciousness. These materials are selected not for aesthetic effect alone, but for their metaphorical weight: resin preserves and seals, hanji breathes, ink stains, and fabric weaves vulnerability with strength. In combination, they mirror the layered and contradictory nature of lived experience.

I approach painting as a porous, interdisciplinary space—one that absorbs gesture, time, memory, and sensation. In my studio, painting often merges with installation, sculpture, and writing. It becomes an event rather than a picture, a site where intuition and structure intersect. My process is slow and iterative; each gesture is embedded within the residue of earlier ones. Resin slows down time. Hanji holds breath. Each layer contributes to a temporal and material accumulation rather than a singular image.

This accumulation is central to how I think about perception and memory. Each mark is a present moment; each layer, a ghost of what once was. My paintings do not represent the mind—they behave like it: fluid, fragmented, overlapping, and nonlinear. There is no fixed viewpoint. Instead, the viewer moves through translucent veils, partial truths, and emotional echoes. The work resists resolution. It invites dwelling.

My interest in interiority is both personal and philosophical. As a Korean-born artist who has spent much of her adult life in the United States, I inhabit a layered cultural and emotional landscape. This position shapes my attention to the unseen forces that structure experience: how emotion is stored, how memory is constructed, how language—or its absence—defines perception. Painting allows me to hold ambiguity without explanation. It becomes a space of inquiry rather than declaration.

Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space informs the conceptual framework of my work, particularly his idea of the house as a vessel for imagination and memory. I extend this metaphor to the mind—a structure composed of hidden rooms, porous walls, and fleeting light. In painting, I map these interiors through texture and form rather than representation. Every material decision becomes architectural; every gesture, a threshold between presence and absence.

While my work engages with the history of painting, it also questions its conventions. I am drawn to the thresholds where painting dissolves—into object, into atmosphere, into presence. What interests me is not innovation through spectacle, but sincerity: a commitment to slowness, to material listening, and to holding space for what cannot be seen but must still be felt.