JI-YUN
임지윤

Ji-Yun was born in South Korea, she lives and works in Paris. A graduate of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the Hong-Ik University in Seoul, Ji-Yun is a member of the Sonamou association.

For Ji-Yun, the body and the living are at the heart of a work exploring very different but certainly complementary plastic forms. Ji-Yun masters painting and drawing as well as ceramics and photography. She is also the author of a monumental work of installations.

The artist confirms the personality of her work in a recognizable and yet surprising style. The painted paintings presented during the 2025 exhibition thus have the strength of a great visual coherence. This is carried by a very marked figuration, quite singular in contemporary Korean art.

Ji-Yun's painted compositions, as well as ceramic works, are perfectly contemporary, fantastical and yet very rigorous in their formal perfection. Ji-Yun's art inevitably refers us to ancient Korean art. An art that has brought to the pinnacle an artistic thought respectful of a balance between figuration and abstraction. And from which Ji-Yun draws inspiration by giving them a perfectly contemporary twist.

Ji-Yun's paintings are captivating by their visual density and by the formats that "open" the subject widely in the field of the support. Their strength lies in these two qualities and are perfectly in harmony with a very poetic part of delicacy and femininity.

Ji-Yun is represented by Magna Gallery Paris and exhibits regularly in Korea (Kim Chong-Yung Museum, Gyeomjae Jeongseon Art Museum, Seoul, Moonshin Museum, DangNam Art Center, Changwon; …) in France and internationally in major solo or group exhibitions (Kia Motors space, Pierre Cardin space, Korean Cultural Center, …). Ji-Yun is the winner of the “2017 Créative Artiste Soutient” competition Kim Chong-Yung Museum, Seoul, and a finalist of the ICART Prize (Paris).

1) “Méduse”, installation created at the Château-Landon swimming pool, in Paris, as part of “Nuit Blanche”, in 2013.
2) We think for example of the frescoes of the tombs of Kangso, Koguryo period 6th-7th centuries, but also of a new more figurative style of Korean painting in the Joseon period (from the 14th century), under the influence of “restored” Confucianism.