Yun Hyong-keun House

The Estate of Yun Hyong-keun is pleased to announce the opening of Yun Hyong-keun House, the former home and studio of Yun Hyong-keun (1928–2007). Located in western Seoul, the house welcomed its first visitors on September 1, 2026, and remains open through October 17. From 2027 it will operate seasonally each spring (April–June) and autumn (September–November).

The house has been sensitively restored to reflect its appearance during the artist's lifetime. "Art is only a trace of life, and a truthful attitude toward life matters more than painting itself," Yun once said. More than a place to view his paintings, Yun Hyong-keun House provides insight into the spaces, daily life, and artistic vision that shaped his practice.

Kim Whanki (1913–1974), the pioneering Korean abstract painter, was Yun's father-in-law and a formative presence in his life and work. The site was originally acquired by Kim in 1963, as part of a public housing property. Yun moved there with his family in 1967, and in 1983 replaced the original structure with a house that brought living and working under one roof. He entrusted the architectural design to his younger brother, Yun Do-Geun (1935–2021), then a professor of Architecture at Hongik University, while defining its spatial organization, material palette, and overall character himself.

Yun Hyong-keun shaped the house around the way he worked. To paint under natural light, he designed a first-floor studio with an entire wall of glass, while the family's living quarters occupied the upper floor. The two-story residence reflects the aesthetics of Western modernist architecture, while the warm timber interiors and traditional wooden lattice doors and windows express a distinctly Korean sensibility. The house and surrounding walls were built with the reddish bricks that Yun described as "the purified color of earth," and the courtyard, planted with pine trees and traditional Korean stonework, shares the restraint of his paintings.

The first-floor studio has been transformed into a permanent exhibition space for his major works, where traces of paint on the floor and the artist's original tools evoke the setting in which he worked. Upstairs, the family's living quarters remain largely unchanged. Throughout the house are antique Korean furniture and ceramics collected over the years by Yun and his wife, Kim Youngsuk (1933–2017), following Kim Whanki before them. Also on view are a plaque bearing the calligraphy of the Joseon master Kim Jeong-hui (1786–1856) and works by Donald Judd (1928–1994), with whom Yun formed a close friendship in his later years. Kim Youngsuk's Room presents her own paintings alongside her collections, as well as photographs and correspondence documenting her relationships with Kim Whanki and his wife, Kim HyangAn (1916–2004).

"For my father, the house was a vessel that held his life and integrity as an artist," said Yun Seong-ryeol, representative of the Estate of Yun Hyong-keun. "Opening it to the public is a way of sharing the truthful attitude toward life that he held to throughout his career."

Two solo exhibitions accompany the house’s first season. In Seoul, PKM Gallery, which exclusively represents the Estate of Yun Hyong-keun, presents reimagine Yun Hyong-keun from August 26 through October 10. In New York, the Judd Foundation presents Yun Hyong-keun from October 8 through January 16, 2027. In 1993, Judd invited Yun to hold a solo exhibition at his own home and studio, 101 Spring Street in SoHo, making it a symbolic site of the exchange between the two artists. Flavin Judd (b. 1968), Artistic Director of the Judd Foundation, now brings together five of the paintings shown there in 1993 alongside a sixth from the same series, made that year and to identical dimensions. The installation recalls the 1993 presentation in the space where it first took place, 33 years on.

"The opening of Yun Hyong-keun House is a meaningful starting point for understanding the aesthetic roots of the Dansaekhwa master," said Park Kyung-mee, President of PKM Gallery. 

Press contact: Hyejin Choi, chj@pkmgallery.com