Kwon YoungJin : Artist Profile.

Q: Who is Kwon YoungJin?

Kwon YoungJin is a Korean artist whose abstract paintings explore texture, gesture, and movement on Japanese shikishi boards. Her work blends Eastern and Western influences, combining bold mark-making with subtle layers of ink and pigment.

Q: Where can I buy artworks by Kwon YoungJin?

Original paintings by Kwon YoungJin are available at Art San Gallery. Her current body of work on shikishi boards can be purchased through our online gallery or by contacting us directly.

Q: What materials does Kwon YoungJin use?

Kwon YoungJin works primarily on Japanese shikishi panels using ink, acrylic, and mixed media. Her technique emphasizes expressive brushwork and textured layering, often with a minimalist or calligraphic influence.

Q: What makes Kwon YoungJin’s work unique?

Her work combines a contemporary abstract approach with deep sensitivity to traditional forms and materials. The use of shikishi boards gives her paintings both a cultural grounding and a modern sculptural presence.

Artist Kwon YoungJin painting in her workshop with a brush, red acrylic, white flowers on a canvas

Since establishing her practice in Japan, Kwon YoungJin, a South Korean artist known for her acrylic gouache paintings, has developed a distinctive visual language rooted in restraint, texture, and memory. Her original artworks have been exhibited in solo and group shows throughout Japan—in Tokyo, Kobe, Nagoya, and Gujo—as well as internationally in Paris, Hong Kong, and Jinju, South Korea.

Recognized with several contemporary art awards in Japan, Kwon YoungJin creates paintings that combine emotional nuance with material sensitivity, attracting growing interest from collectors and curators.

Kwon YoungJin lives and works in Gujo Hachiman, Japan. Her paintings emerge slowly, like memories returning in fragments—shaped by childhood games, folded paper, and shadow play. Working with acrylic gouache and gesso, she builds surfaces that feel at once quiet and intricate, where presence and absence meet in soft tension.

Rooted in a deep sensitivity to material and time, Kwon YoungJin’s practice is guided by restraint. Her compositions unfold through repetition and layering, allowing subtle differences in tone, texture, and space to accumulate meaning. Rather than illustrating stories, her work evokes them—through glimpses, silhouettes, and unspoken symbols. What is held back becomes as important as what is revealed.

Figures often appear in pale whites—delicate beings who hover between visibility and disappearance. They are shaped not for drama, but for quiet attention. Their presence suggests fragility and resilience, sometimes referencing the condition of albinism as a metaphor for standing slightly apart, for being seen differently. Surrounding these figures are fragments from fairy tales, traces of animals, or half-remembered objects. These motifs do not narrate, but resonate—like forgotten sounds or fading dreams.

Kwon YoungJin’s visual sensibility draws from both Korean and Japanese aesthetics, where surface, emptiness, and rhythm carry emotional weight. Her approach also reflects an early period of conceptual exploration, shaped in part by her time in Europe. Stillness, repetition, and the poetics of minimal means remain central to her work.

"Hope" painting by artist Kwon YoungJin, hand of a girl playing with a plane made of white paper. Backgroung is a pale blue.

She has exhibited widely in Japan, Korea, and France. In Japan, her work has been shown in Tokyo at Ginza Mitsukoshi, Shinjuku Isetan, Tokyo Art Theater, Wacoal Art Center, and in the ARTabi exhibitions; in Kobe at the Hotel Kitano Plaza; in Nagoya at IIMEFUKURAME and the Tatsuno Museum; and in Gujo at Gallery Shigatsu no mori. In Korea, she has exhibited at CONT. SPACE in Jinju. Internationally, her work has been presented at Galerie Satellite in Paris and in ARTabi exhibitions in Hong Kong. Over the years, her practice has been recognized with awards including the Grand Prize and Gallery IDF Prize at IIMEFUKURAME in Nagoya, the Hakkendo Gallery Prize at the IAG Art Award, and distinctions from Independent Tokyo and the Gate Art Competition.

Kwon YoungJin is represented by ギャラリー四月の森 (Gallery Shigatsu no mori) in Gujo Hachiman and joined the Shikishi Art Project by Art San Gallery in 2025.

japanese torinoko paper as background of the stripe

Frequently Asked Questions about Kwon YoungJin

Who is Kwon YoungJin?
Kwon YoungJin is a Korean painter whose work explores abstraction, gesture, and texture. She creates striking compositions on traditional Japanese shikishi boards, blending Eastern aesthetic traditions with contemporary energy.

Where can I buy artworks by Kwon YoungJin?
Art San Gallery offers a selection of original works by Kwon YoungJin. Her current shikishi-based paintings can be viewed and purchased online or by contacting the gallery.

What materials does Kwon YoungJin use?
Kwon YoungJin paints on Japanese shikishi boards using ink, acrylic, and mixed techniques. Her brushstrokes are often bold and gestural, balanced by delicate layering and compositional restraint.

What makes Kwon YoungJin’s work unique?
Her art merges Korean and Japanese traditions with a modern abstract sensibility. Each painting balances spontaneity and control, creating visually engaging and materially rich compositions.