New York City artist Sung Won Yun’s multimedia exhibit “Inner Landscape” is now showing at the Harold J. Miossi Gallery on Cuesta College’s San Luis Obispo campus until October 17.
“Inner Landscape” is a multimedia exploration that has extended over a decade for Yun. It includes photographs, drawings and paintings. “All of my work is inspired by nature, like very personal nature,” Yun said.
Yun’s work explores the emotional and subconscious landscapes that are with all humans, just underneath the surface every day.
The exhibit starts with her photographic works of landscapes that are overwhelmed by the weather. “(The) photographs really give you a window into the way in which (Yun) is deeply looking at the world and interested in the landscape and how the landscape can be obscured and abstracted,” said Harold J. Miossi Gallery Curator Timothy Stark.
This obscuring and abstracting of landscapes continues through the rest of the exhibit in Yun’s paintings and drawings. From a distance, her paintings appear minimalist, monotone, and cohesive, but upon closer examination, each piece is composed of minute layers of dots in a multitude of colors and textures that offer a deeper look into the variety of emotions Yun is expressing in each of her works.
The process she takes for each of these paintings takes several months. She starts with painting a flat grey or brown on the canvas, but through a meditative process while feeling and experiencing her emotions and their memories, she uses layers of paint and graphite to create her emotional experiences with different landscapes, from NYC to Iceland.
She usually has several works in progress at the same time. She decides which to work on based on what emotion or feeling she has at that time. In this way, each of Yun’s paintings is deeply personal, and yet she hopes that these expressions are also universal.
Her drawings are made on layers of translucent vellum paper covered in tiny circles of multiple colors, greys and blacks. The way the layers lie on each other gives each of the drawings depth and reveals a natural flow and expression that mimics microscopic images. Yun’s process for these drawings has her flipping back and forth between layers of vellum instead of working a layer at a time.
“I really would be very happy if people who are leaving here can share in my emotional space with a song like this, a musical landscape,” Yun said.
After Cuesta College, Sung Won Yun’s exhibit will be shown in Boston. Before she returned home to NYC on Saturday, September 6, Yun said, “I really want to go back to my studio to do my new work.”
The Harold J. Miossi Art Gallery is on Cuesta College’s San Luis Obispo campus, in the courtyard of the Cultural and Performing Arts Center. “Inner Landscape” is open Monday through Friday 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and by appointment until Oct. 17. Admission to the gallery is free.
Josef Davidman • Sep 25, 2025 at 6:06 am
This is a beautiful article and inspires me not only to see the exhibit before it ends on October 17th, but also the film, “Perfect Days,” by Wim Wenders and Takuma Takasaki. Exhibits like the one Michaela describes are extremely relevant, timely, and healthy for individuals in our contemporary society who seek solace from the multitude of mindless media filled with quick and sort lived dips of dopamine. Thanks for sharing this beautiful article, Michaela!