윤세완 개인전 《Dirty Clean Mirror: neo web》

   엄밀히 말하면, 사변과 경험은 완전히 대치되는 말이다. 하지만 윤세완에게 이미지를 재가공하는 일은 해당 이미지에 담긴 경험이나 정보값을 현 시점에서 유사-체험하는 행위와 같다. 그는 이미지를 수집한 날짜를 기록해두고, 시간을 두고 천천히 뜯어보고, 일부를 오려내 다른 배경에 대입해보면서 새로운 맥락을 발견하곤 한다. 사실 그것은 우리가 경험하지도 않은 과거의 일들을 사진이나 영상 기록으로 바라보며 정보를 습득하고, 뜯어보면서 분석하고, 다시 현재의 일들에 비추어 보는 것과 다르지 않다. 어찌보면 우리는 이미 역사라는 학문에서 다루는 고고학적 이미지들을 통해 사변적 경험을 하고 있었던 셈이다.

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재료가 된 최초의 이미지와 완성된 작품 속 이미지 사이에는 여러 회차의 사변적 경험과 그를 통한 욕망과 좌절이 존재한다. 윤세완은 이를 이미지 조각들 틈에서 발굴한 개인과 동세대의 유머와 노스텔지어로 승화시키려 한다. 그의 작업이 꼼꼼하게 묘사했지만 얇은 물감층으로 옅게 그린 듯한 회화로, 깊은 감정을 내포하고 있지만 덤덤한 듯 편집된 영상으로 역설적인 방법론을 취하는 것도 그러한 이유에서일 것이다. (전문보기)

글. 송윤지(미술비평)

기간: 2025.12.17-12.30 (월요일 휴관, 화-일 13:00-18:00)

장소: shhh (인천 중구 제물량로166번길 5, 2층)

주최·주관: 윤세완

글: 송윤지

그래픽 디자인: Studio Downleit & 오시선
후원: 인천문화재단, 시작공간일부, 인천광역시

윤세완은 지난한 현상의 좌절된 구멍을 유사 경험으로 메우고, 마치 그것을 획득했다고 믿는 습성에 호기심을 가진다. 모뉴멘트, 아니메, 옥외광고와 사변적인 경험을 통해 동시대 부유하는 파편화 된 것들을 비추고 강박적 모음의 행위를 회화, 조각, 설치, 퍼포먼스의 언어로 치환한다. 믿음과 속도, 무기력과 자조를 은유적으로 드러내 가장 개인적인 이야기에서 시작한 동세대의 이야기를 담고자한다.

본 전시는 인천광역시와 (재)인천문화재단의 후원을 받아 '2025 청년예술인창작지원 사업'에 선정되어 제작되는 사업입니다.

Yoon Sewan

Dirty Clean Mirror: Neo Web

December 17–30, 2025

Image Archaeology: The Paradox of Speculative Experience

Text by Song Yunji (Art Critic)

Memory is inherently fragmentary. Even within the range of personal history, it never keeps a linear narrative. Although memories are clearly made up of the flow of time I have lived through, they are actually discontinuous fragments of time centered around specific events. This fragmentation stems from the fact that memories are stored in the brain as traces of experiences, that is, pieces of impressions or information. Therefore, recalling a memory usually involves recalling a specific visual scene. For example, the face of Santa Claus giving me presents at the kindergarten Christmas event, or the flags of various countries fluttering against the blue sky at the school sports day. Such images function as mnemonic fragments; When recalled, they unfold the space and time of that moment, as if unpacking archived data.

Yoon Sewan obsessively collects images, piling them up indiscriminately before revisiting, sorting, and editing them anew. The artist describes this process as digging, hoarding, and cropping. The images she collects come from a wide variety of sources: circulating internet memes and image macros; objects and monuments; frames extracted from anime and manga; vernacular urban imagery such as outdoor billboards, commercial signage, and street graffiti. Within her works, images that are already fragmentary are subjected to further segmentation through cropping, then recomposed through layering and juxtaposition. In this process, the excavated images are reconstructed upon epistemic frames of entirely different timelines and worldviews, severed from their original semiotic contexts. The artist designates this mode of image reconstitution as “speculative experience.”

From an epistemological standpoint, strictly, speculation and experience occupy opposing registers. However, for Yoon Sewan, reconstructing images resembles a quasi-experience—re-experience in the present that engages with the experiences or information embedded within images. She records the date he collected the images, slowly examines them over time, and cuts out parts of them to place them in different backgrounds, thereby discovering new contexts. In fact, this is no different from how we access photographs or video records of past events we haven't personally experienced. We often review and analyse archived images to gain insight into present-day events. That is the methodology of history or archaeology, and from this perspective, we have already had a speculative experience through archaeological images.

For Yoon Sewan, images as speculative experience also function as clues for recovering fragments of lost memory. In this exhibition, the artist attempts to restore memories of his younger brother through newly produced video works. In Letters, based on home videos containing intimate scenes from childhood, Yoon chases the image of a blood relative she can no longer meet. Scenes from 'Digimon Adventure', an anime they once loved together, are layered over memories of her younger brother that had long been buried. In another video work, A Way to Where It Did Not Flow, Yoon walked and filmed various places in Songdo, where her younger brother last lived, and pasted various images that came to mind while walking in the video. The low-quality footage shot on an old camcorder and the digitally weathered images evoke the paradox of images: being both a recording medium and a fleeting entity. This closely resembles grief itself—the simultaneous desire to remember and to forget.

In this way, images become mirrors that reflect multiple meanings. Images are visual, yet at times synesthetic. And images are easily produced and accessed by anyone; they inevitably contain diverse contexts. For Yoon Sewan, images are both the material and the outcome of her artworks. Yet her practices, which begin with images and return to images, exist in a relationship that is close but unreachable—like a reflection in a mirror. Between the source images and the finished artwork's images lie multiple cycles of speculative experience, along with the desires and frustrations that emerge through them. Yoon Sewan seeks to sublimate these tensions into a form of personal and generational humor and nostalgia excavated from among image fragments. It is for this reason that her artworks adopt a paradox: paintings that are meticulously described yet lightly rendered in thin layers of paint, or videos that carry deep emotion while remaining edited in a restrained, matter-of-fact manner.

Organized and Presented by Yoon Sewan
Text Song Yunji

Graphic Design Studio Downleit & Osisun

Supported by Incheon Foundation for Arts and Culture, Space1bu, City of Incheon

This exhibition is produced with support from the City of Incheon and the Incheon Foundation for Arts & Culture, having been selected for the 2025 Young Artists Creative Support Program.