Between Truth and Illusion: The Art of Yoo Hyun Mi

Perception and delusion can be a fine line. What looks like a beautiful highlight may conceal a tragic scene; what appears to be a misfortune may in fact carry a blessing in disguise. These are thoughts I carry constantly, in hopes of treasuring the life I have now, filled with both great opportunities and growing pains. While the idea may seem simple on the surface, expressing the volatile and fragile emotions packaged within it is far more complex.

Yet there is one artist in my opinion, I found to be able to embody this belief better than I could ever imagine: Yoo Hyun Mi.

About Yoo Hyun Mi

Contemporary artist born in 1964, Yoo Hyun Mi (유현미) blends Korean elements from traditional korean beliefs into visual representations of everyday items and environments, highlighting aspects of life’s constants and the routines that endure despite the passage of time.

With over three decades of experience, her works have been held in major Korean collections, including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, the Seoul Museum of Art, and the Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art.

At the Kumho Museum of Art in Seoul, I got to witness Yoo’s solo exhibition Hybrid Reality presents four levels of her work. From the basement to the third floor, the exhibition unfolds across her series: Still Life, COSMOS, The Ten Symbols of Longevity, and Good Luck. Each level painted in a distinct colour to guide viewers through each series represented, and their depiction of reality and illusion.

Still Life

Far from depicting simple objects, Still Life blurs the line between media. First creating a composition modeled from clay, painted, and lastly photographed by Yoo; this series makes viewers question whether they are looking at a sculpture, painting, or photograph. Yoo layers and captures multiple medias to create works that require close attention to understand what we are really seeing, reminding us how easily an illusion can be mistaken as truth—maybe just like how we may carry certain ideals in ourselves in life.

COSMOS

In COSMOS, modified everyday items such as broken mirrors, cups of water, balls, hourglasses, books, and chairs float like planets in space. The tools composed in a way as if suspended alone in a different dimension, our perception of spatial awareness gets shaken as a result. This COSMOS series aims to offer a new perspective on everyday environments, hoping for viewers to imagine individual lives as a new realm of distinct experiences.

The Ten Symbols of Longevity

Inspired by Sipjangsaeng (십장생 / 十長生) also known as The Ten Symbols of Longevity, Yoo stacks the traditional motifs of eternal life derived from this belief into everyday objects. The instability of each object emphasises the importance of life’s balance between fortune and misfortune. The ten symbols of longevity, paired with its collapsible arrangements perfectly depict the perfect contradiction of life, and thus the need for gratefulness.

Good Luck

Good Luck reimagines a different set of Korean scholarly traditional motifs called Chaekgeori (책거리 / 冊巨里) and Sipjangsaeng (십장생 / 十長生) with their modern substitutions: a plastic bottle for water, an origami crane for the bird of longevity, and a pomegranate for immortality. Bright obangsaek (오방색) colours—Korea’s five traditional colors; deepen the contrast between the real thing and its modern alternative, adding on that fortune can come to us in varying different forms depending on how we see fit.

Determining Reality

Through each of these series, I found myself reflecting on what I had believed to be the truth, which may in fact have been an illusion all along. Her works remind us that life is often defined by its balance: joy and sorrow, luck and loss, permanence and fragility are never as far apart as they seem.

By unsettling our perception, she teaches us to embrace uncertainty and to see beyond surface appearances. In this way, Yoo’s art not only reveals how what we believe to be true can turn out false, but also strongly encourages us to decide for ourselves what is real.

Hybrid reality by Yoo Hyun Mi at Kumho Museum of Art will continue until 28 September 2025 with tickets starting from 5,000 KRW.