You Hyeonkyeong
Eyes
28 Feb — 4 Apr 2026
"They are only two circles, and yet once I draw them, I wonder how so much can be held inside. I ask myself what it is that I, as I draw, am truly seeing, and whose eyes these drawn eyes belong to." — You Hyeonkyeong
GOLESTANI is pleased to present »Eyes«, the first solo exhibition of Berlin-based artist You Hyeonkyeong at the gallery. The retrospective spans the years 2011 to 2022 and brings together oil paintings created across decisive chapters of the artist’s life, including her time in New York and her move to Germany. Portraits appear alongside animals and works shaped by family, displacement, and physical vulnerability. Rather than presenting images as descriptions, You Hyeonkyeong constructs them through painting itself—through compression, omission, and the slow accumulation of brushwork. What emerges is not a depiction of a subject, but a question: what kind of presence can painting hold, and what remains once the visible begins to disappear?
We warmly invite you to the opening on Saturday, February 28th at 6 p.m.
The artist will be present.
Opening reception
Saturday, February 28th, 2026
6—9p.m.
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"I called the painting »Homeless« a self-portrait because of the eyes. In the later half of 2016, I spent six months in New York, and at night I would see homeless people sleeping on the streets of Chelsea. From late 2014 to 2016, for about two years, I lived with symptoms of depression. I described it this way because it felt like a swamp: I could not escape, no matter how hard I tried. I could not eat or fall asleep, and I experienced strange symptoms in which my skin split, and burned.
At that time, I was offered a residency program in New York. I refused at first, but I went after being told it would be better to do so. As soon as I arrived, the skin on my face, even around my eyes, turned red and cracked. I could not meet anyone. I took over-the-counter sleep aids from the pharmacy and spent the days lying down, listening to the sounds outside.
With a kind of social avoidance, I walked at night or before dawn, avoiding people’s gaze, for as long as my body allowed. The streets were lively during the day, but at night there were homeless people in every alley. I felt that we were the same.
While I was there, I wandered through Chelsea between 22nd and 27th Street. I then widened my route, walking all the way to the Hudson River, and little by little I began to see the sun even in the daytime. As I started moving in brighter hours, I came to recognize the homeless people who were always in the same places along my route. In daylight, among the crowds, I saw them up close as they blended in. Their eyes were fragile, like a deer’s. Perhaps when one remains in a difficult situation for a long time, the eyes become this earnest. I cannot forget them.
From 2015, for more than a year, I could not paint and lived inside illness. Then one day, after walking through the nights of Chelsea, I picked up a brush and painted the face I could feel with my eyes closed. When I stepped back and looked, it was so much like me that I laughed. I knew that the depression, which had not been brief, would come to an end. After that, I painted. Near the end of my time in New York, I painted the faces I had come to know on the street and the eyes I remembered through the bodies of dogs. They were dogs well cared for by their owners, as diverse as the people I saw in New York, and I encountered them while walking at dawn. After that, no matter what difficulties come,
I no longer drive my mind into illness." — You Hyeonkyeong
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You Hyeonkyeong’s paintings begin with portraiture, but far from traditional representations, they are never merely portraits. Her figures emerge through gesture and erasure—hovering between figuration and abstraction, between presence and disappearance. Faces often dissolve into stains of color, as if identity can only be approached indirectly, through atmosphere and affect. Works such as "Young Person" (2011) demonstrate how a title can function as the only concrete clue, while paint carries the emotional weight.
Her portraits are shaped by encounter: the model is not simply observed, but actively present, staring back, forming a tense psychological space between artist and subject. In this sense, the paintings become traces of intersubjective experience rather than depictions of likeness.
This intensity is deeply tied to the artist’s biography. In New York, after years marked by depression, You painted "Homeless" as a self-portrait—born from nightly walks through Chelsea, where she encountered people sleeping on the streets and recognized something of herself in their fragile gaze. Later works such as "Family I" (2021) and "My Younger Brother" (2021) expand her focus toward memory, kinship, and physical vulnerability, shaped by migration, isolation, and the aftermath of a traumatic accident.
Across her oeuvre, You Hyeonkyeong treats brushwork as an accumulation of time: each stroke a condensed record of waiting, endurance, and perception. Her paintings do not illustrate a life—they carry it.
The exhibition "Eyes" is on view in the gallery in Düsseldorf until April 4, 2026.
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YOU Hyeonkyeong (b. 1985, South Korean) is a painter currently based in Berlin. She received her MFA in 2011 at the Seoul National University Graduate School for Painting and her BFA in Painting at Seoul National University. YOU’s work has been shown internationally with solo exhibitions at Iseurrat, Seoul, Korea; Parkseobo Foundation, Seoul, Korea; Asia Now, Paris, France; Spacemom Museum of Art, Cheongjoo, Korea; Doosan gallery, New York, USA; OCI Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea; SeMA Seoul Museum of Art, Insa Art Center, Seoul, Korea et al. In Addition, her work has been shown in numerous group shows as Space Supernormal, Seoul, Korea; Hippie Hannam, Seoul, Korea; Schloss Plüschow, Plüschow, Germany; Nook Gallery, Seoul, Korea; Sejong Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea; Hangaram Art Museum, Seoul Arts Center, Seoul, Korea; Mimesis Art Museum, Paju, Korea; Chung Mun Kye Museum, Ansan, Korea; Gallery Artvera’s, Geneva, Switzerland; Seoul Olympic Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea; Seongnam Arts Center Cube Museum Bandal Gallery, Seongnam, Korea; Ligak Museum of Art, Cheonan, Korea; Chosun University Museum of Art, Gwangju, Korea; OCI Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea; Jeonbuk Museum of Art, Wanju, Korea; National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, Gwacheon, Korea. YOU has received awards for her work as the 8th Chongkundang Yesuljisang and the Ha dong chul Scholarship, and is included in notable collections as of MMCA Government Art Bank, Korea, the Seoul National University Museum of Art, Korea and the OCI Museum of Art, Korea.