The city, drifting —
somewhere between real and imagined
A photograph, reconstructed into a painting.Dreamlike colour, and the everyday glimpsed while walking the city.
From photograph to painting —
a city walked, then re-seen
An Sohyeon is a mid-career visual artist who works from a photographic base, reconstructing the urban landscape with a painterly sensibility. She graduated from the Department of Photography, Video & Media at Sangmyung University in 2016.
Her work begins in the everyday — in walking the city as if drifting through it. From that walking comes the raw material: the ordinary streets, airports, and edges of a metropolis, caught in passing. She then reworks these photographs into images closer to painting, in which dreamlike colour and the gap between perception and reality build an emotional density that hovers between the real and the imagined.
From 2017 onward she presented this practice in a sustained run of solo exhibitions at Gallery Bresson in Seoul — 〈LUCK 喜〉 (2017), 〈CITY OASIS〉 (2018), and 〈NEW REMINISCENCE〉 (2021) — alongside 〈Authentic City〉 (2023) and 〈나의이름은〉 (2024). The titles trace a single line of inquiry: the city not as document but as a space of reverie.
Her practice is also multi-layered. An Sohyeon is an actor as well as a visual artist, and in 2021 she directed and appeared in the silent dance film 〈LUNATIC〉, which went on to awards and invitations at overseas film festivals. The same attention to image, body, and atmosphere runs through both her photographs and her film.
Major themes
- 1
The city, reconstructed
A photographic base reworked with a painterly sensibility — the everyday city turned into something closer to reverie than record.
- 2
Between real and imagined
Dreamlike colour and the gap in perception build an emotional density that hovers between what is there and what is imagined.
- 3
Image, body, film
A multi-layered practice — as actor and director as well as visual artist, she carries the same attention to image and atmosphere into the dance film 〈LUNATIC〉.
Selected solo exhibitions
- 2024〈나의이름은〉 (Noeul Artisan Center)
- 2023〈Authentic City〉 (Gallery Bresson, Seoul)
- 2021〈NEW REMINISCENCE〉 (Gallery Bresson, Seoul)
- 2020〈NEW REMINISCENCE〉 (Ewha Womans University Seoul Hospital Art Cube)
- 2018〈CITY OASIS〉 (Gallery Bresson, Seoul)
- 2017〈LUCK 喜〉 (Gallery Bresson, Seoul)
Group shows · film · awards
- Group: 〈Invisible Cities〉 (Gallery Bresson, Seoul, 2025); 〈CRAFT + MAN = SHIP〉 (Seoul Battleship, Hangang Park, 2024)
- Group: 〈SEEA 2021〉 (Seoul Arts Center); selected for Porsche Dreamers.On Artists and shown at the Gwangju Design Biennale (2021)
- Film: 〈LUNATIC〉 (2021), a silent dance film — directed, performed; awarded and invited at overseas film festivals
- Awards / selections: Porsche Dreamers.On Artists 20 (2021); Ewha Womans University Seoul Hospital Art Cube open call (2020); Grand Prize, Suwon Hwaseong Photography Contest (2011); Silver Prize, Jeju International Airport Photo Exhibition (2010)
- Book: 《사랑만이 정답일 뿐: 센스의 탄생》 (under the name 안쏘쥬, 2023)
Three essays —
on the city, the dream, and the body
1A practice that begins in walking
An Sohyeon's work begins where most of us pass without looking: the ordinary surfaces of the city, met while walking. She describes the act as drifting — moving through the metropolis as if floating through it, letting the streets, the airports, the unremarkable edges arrive of their own accord.
The camera comes first, but it is not the end. The photograph is a starting point, a record of a passing moment that she then reworks into something closer to painting. What begins as document becomes, through her handling of colour and surface, a held image — a place the eye can return to rather than merely glance at.
2Emotional density between the real and the imagined
The dreamlike quality of An Sohyeon's images is not decoration. It comes from a gap — between what the eye records and what perception makes of it. Her colour pulls the familiar city slightly out of true, so that a recognizable street reads at the same time as a remembered or imagined one.
Across the 〈CITY OASIS〉, 〈NEW REMINISCENCE〉, and 〈Authentic City〉 series, that gap is the subject. The titles themselves point to it: an oasis inside the city, a new reminiscence, an authentic city that is also an atmospheric one. The work does not ask whether these places are real or imagined; it lives in the emotional density that gathers between the two.
3〈LUNATIC〉 — the same attention, in motion
An Sohyeon's practice is not confined to the still image. She is an actor and a director as well as a visual artist, and in 2021 she made the silent dance film 〈LUNATIC〉 — a wordless work built on movement rather than dialogue, which she both directed and performed in.
The film carried the same concerns as her photographs — image, atmosphere, the body in a charged space — into time and motion, and went on to awards and invitations at overseas film festivals. Seen alongside her urban landscapes, it makes the shape of her practice clear: a single sensibility moving across photograph, painting, performance, and film.
From a city walked to a city re-seen, from the still photograph to the moving body, An Sohyeon's work pursues a single question: how does the ordinary become a place worth dwelling in? She joins this campaign not as a subject of its cause but as a fellow artist in solidarity — offering her work so that those navigating financial exclusion today might find a way through.
Selected Works
3 works are featured here.
An Sohyeon joined this campaign in solidarity with fellow artists. Every work sold flows directly into the artists' mutual-aid loan fund— a purchase becomes the next month's lifeline for an artist navigating financial exclusion today.
