Guimi You (b. 1985, Seoul, South Korea; lives and works in Seoul) is a painter whose work explores the emotional resonance of landscapes, interiors, and solitude. Through vibrant and poetic use of color, she creates atmospheric scenes that blend observation and imagination, capturing the fleeting sensations of memory, reflection, and presence. Her paintings often depict tranquil environments—flower-filled hillsides, still ponds, domestic spaces—that become sites for introspection and deeper engagement.
Originally trained in East Asian painting, You’s understanding of its pictorial traditions—where painting is not an act of depiction, but of evocation—anchors her approach. Her surfaces are built through a sensitive modulation of tone and translucency, where forms emerge gradually rather than being firmly outlined, echoing the atmospheric principles of traditional Korean landscape painting. After studying in South Korea, she lived in the United Kingdom and the United States, where she began working with oil paint and immersed herself in Western painting, wherein the external world often functions as a mirror for inner states. Today, You’s work sits at the intersection of Eastern and Western traditions, combining the delicacy and fluidity of ink with the depth and materiality of oil.
You’s paintings invite sustained attention and close looking in the midst of the accelerated rhythms of contemporary image culture. In works such as Breath and Rest, scenes unfold with minimal action—figures lingering within quiet interiors or drifting through open environments— where meaning emerges not through narrative but through time spent with the image. Her mark-making recalls the layered transparency of ink washes and the restrained harmony of traditional Korean landscape painting, evoking Jeong Seon’s Inwangjesaekdo, where form and atmosphere are inseparable. This sensibility finds a parallel in Romanticism, particularly in Caspar David Friedrich’s use of the Rückenfigur (a figure seen from behind that invites the viewer into a contemplative, subjective encounter with the scene), as You’s anonymous figures operate not as fixed surrogates but as traces of presence that invite slowness and introspection. At the same time, her work engages a Surrealist sensitivity to the uncanny, where subtle shifts in color, scale, and spatial logic transform everyday scenes into sites of perceptual ambiguity.
You has exhibited widely at institutions across Asia, Europe, and the United States. Notable presentations include group exhibitions at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. Recent solo presentations include exhibitions at Almine Rech, London, Jessica Silverman, San Francisco, and Make Room, Los Angeles, among others. You’s work is included in public collections internationally, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; de Young Museum, San Francisco, California; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, California; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, Florida; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, California; Roberts Institute of Art, London, United Kingdom; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; Museu Inima de Paula, Belo Horizonte, Brazil; X Museum, Beijing, China; Yuz Foundation, Shanghai, China; and the Seoul National University Museum of Art and College of Fine Art, South Korea, among others.