Overview

EDUCATION

2003  École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France
DNSEP — Diplôme National Supérieur d’Expression Plastique
Master’s Degree in Fine Arts (Gahyun Art)

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2026  La Fable des Étoiles Art Salon de H, Seoul, Korea

2025. Daughter of the Sea, Mother of the Forest  Gallery Iho, Jeju, Korea

2025. The Forest Still Speaks  Acheon Art Museum, Yeongam, Korea

2025. The Magic Forest. Passion Gallery, Seoul, Korea

2025. The Forest of Gaya. Gallery Marie, Seoul, Korea

2024. Forest is Color. Gallery The Key, Seoul, Korea

2024. Patterns of Time. Gahyun Art Gallery, Ilsan, Korea

2024  When Light Breathes  Olmi Art Space, Seoul, Korea

2024  The Possibility of the Border  Gallery MHK, Seoul, Korea

2024  As It Is Schengen Gallery, Gwangju, Korea

2024  The Notation of Sunlight  Art Salon de H, Seoul, Korea

2024  Bonnui: Capturing the Diffusion of the Forest Gallery Venus, Hanam, Korea

2023  Hong Il Hwa: Crossing Boundaries  Ami Art Museum, Dangjin, Korea

2023  Garden — Hong Il Hwa × d’strict  Arte Museum, Jeju, Korea

2023. Color of Thorns
Niche Gallery, Tokyo, Japan 

2023  The Forest  Pium Museum, Goseong, Korea

2022 Épine  ArtsKoco Gallery, Luxembourg

2022  Our Nature Espace Icare, Issy-les-Moulineaux, France

2022  La Forêt  Gallery RuacH, Seoul, Korea

2020. Landscape Ephemeral Gallery Marie, Seoul, Korea

2020  Forest. ACC Project / Espace Rhizome, Changwon, Korea

2019  Elle GOT  Interwired Studios, Seoul, Korea

2019  Haenyeo in Gotjawal. Jeju Sculpture Park, Jeju, Korea

2018. Madame  Gallery Dam, Seoul, Korea

2018  La Corée Contemporaine. La Maison des Arts, Le Barcarès, France

Artist’s Statement

Hong Il-hwa’s practice explores the relationship between the human figure, popular imagery, and contemporary visual culture. Working across painting, drawing, and mixed media, she combines vivid color, graphic forms, and layered compositions to create images that move between portraiture, symbolism, and visual narrative.

The human face is a recurring subject in Hong’s work. Rather than treating portraiture as a direct record of identity, she transforms facial features into expressive and symbolic elements. Her figures often appear stylized, fragmented, or enlarged, reflecting the ways identity is shaped by memory, media, desire, and social perception.

Hong’s visual language is defined by bold color, simplified forms, and a dynamic tension between flatness and depth. Drawing on the aesthetics of popular culture, advertising, comics, and contemporary image-making, she creates paintings that are immediately accessible while retaining psychological and conceptual complexity. Familiar visual elements are reconfigured into scenes marked by ambiguity, tension, humor, and emotional distance.

Her practice examines the relationship between individuality and mass-produced imagery. Through the repetition, transformation, and layering of recognizable forms, Hong questions how images circulate and how personal identity is constructed within contemporary society. Her paintings occupy a space between the personal and the public, combining intimate emotional references with the visual codes of popular culture.

Through her distinctive use of color and composition, Hong Il-hwa creates works that are visually direct yet conceptually open-ended. Her paintings invite viewers to consider the unstable boundaries between reality and representation, private experience and collective imagery, and the individual face and the cultural images through which identity is understood.

Biography

Hong Il-hwa is a Korean contemporary artist whose practice explores the relationship between the human figure, popular imagery, and contemporary visual culture. Working across painting, drawing, and mixed media, she combines vivid color, graphic forms, and layered compositions to create images that move between portraiture, symbolism, and visual narrative.

A recurring subject in Hong’s work is the human face. Rather than presenting portraiture as a straightforward record of identity, she transforms facial features into expressive and symbolic elements. Her figures often appear stylized, fragmented, or enlarged, reflecting the ways in which identity is shaped by memory, media, desire, and social perception.

Hong’s visual language is characterized by bold colors, simplified forms, and a dynamic balance between flatness and depth. Drawing on the aesthetics of popular culture, advertising, comics, and contemporary image-making, she creates paintings that are immediately accessible while retaining psychological and conceptual complexity. Familiar visual elements are reconfigured into scenes that suggest ambiguity, tension, humor, and emotional distance.

Her practice also examines the relationship between individuality and mass-produced imagery. By repeating, transforming, and layering recognizable forms, Hong questions how images circulate and how personal identity is constructed within contemporary society. Her paintings often occupy a space between the personal and the public, combining intimate emotional references with the visual codes of popular culture.

Through her distinctive use of color and composition, Hong Il-hwa creates works that are both visually direct and conceptually open-ended. Her paintings invite viewers to consider the unstable boundaries between reality and representation, private experience and collective imagery, and the individual face and the cultural images through which identity is understood.

Works