Painter Yoon Hyun-sik’s solo exhibition “Rebirth” is being held from October 15 to 21.

At a gallery in Insadong, Yoon Hyun-sik’s works arrest your gaze before you even realize it. 

What coats his canvases isn’t paint—but stone dust. “I sketch with stone dust,”

 he says, as though describing a natural act. For Yoon, material isn’t merely a tool; it’s the very beginning of thought.

 Mixing ground stone with animal glue, layering and drying it over time, he builds not only a solid surface but also a space of self-discipline and contemplation.

Yoon laughs and calls himself a “country person,” yet his art feels strikingly contemporary. 

He eliminates artificial shine, constructing surfaces that absorb light rather than reflect it. 

“Paint from the store glitters after five coats,” he explains, “but this doesn’t. It absorbs.” By pushing the traditional medium to its limits, Yoon transforms material itself into emotion—his paintings are less about depicting form than about embodying feeling.

This exhibition marks the first time he presents his large-scale works, long in preparation, in the heart of Insadong. 

“I never tried to gain attention too early,” he says. “When you expose yourself too soon, you hit a wall.” Quoting Confucius—“Hide your light”—he speaks of patience and purpose, of clearing his own path at his own pace.

At times, Yoon’s paintings feel almost sculptural. “I wanted to translate Giacometti’s sculpture into painting,” he says. 

His surfaces are rough and uneven, where traces of the human form flicker through layers of dust and earth. 

What we see is not a painter’s stroke, but something more primal—the breath of matter itself. “This isn’t sculpture,” he adds, “but it looks stronger than one.”

Yoon’s art is not imitation, nor is it representation. “I’ve worked only from inspiration,” he says. “I’ve had no master, and I’ve walked my own path.”

 Indeed, there is solitude in his canvases—but not silence. His paintings carry the marks of life itself.

 Even in works inspired by the simple act of watching his young grandchild play, Yoon probes the fractures between nature, humanity, and time.

As for the direction of Korean contemporary art, he offers a clear stance:

“No one else in the world works quite like this. For Korean art to evolve, it must embrace more diversity. When things start looking the same, they stop being necessary.”

Yoon Hyun-sik’s paintings are raw, imperfect, and profoundly sincere. 

They celebrate beauty not as a state of completion, but as an ongoing process.

 His canvases—built from dust—feel like an attempt to hold the world steady, a quiet act of resistance against the velocity of modern art.