You Ni Chae

Youni Chae is a painter based in New York City. Born in Daegu, South Korea, she earned her BFA and MFA degrees from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her paintings explore abstract imagery built from simple structures, forms, and colors through repetitive marks and tactile surfaces. Rooted in her individualistic, idiosyncratic, cross-cultural experience, her work explores the ephemeral presence of painting without settled belonging or assurance. Subtle shifts in color, value, and physicality shape a challenging pictorial space within each work, and by creating particular variations between the works, it defies a singular positioning, which builds a larger, ever-changing esoteric nature of painting. In insisting on this difficulty, her work tends to stay within the tradition of picture-making itself. Her practice demands both understanding of painting’s long history and a critical, ambivalent perspective toward that same history.

Chae has taught painting and drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, William Paterson University, and Harrington College of Design. She has exhibited widely, with solo and two-person exhibitions including Laurel Gitlen, Adams and Ollman, 65Grand, Julius Caesar, and Adds Donna.

Her recent group exhibitions include Are You Still Painting?, covered by The New York Times. Her work has also been featured on Contemporary Art Daily, Oregon ArtWatch, Art Viewer, and OFLUXO.