The paintings of Yun Hyong-keun have a character that forces people who see them into silence. It seems that the more you talk about them, the further away the word escapes from his paintings. On the contrary, a strong message is transmitted from them. It is no exaggeration to say that the message is so strong that once you have seen his works, you cannot forget it. However, they do not induce people to be talkative, instead they have the effect of spreading words towards the inside of those who see them.

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A trend in Korean painting that became apparent in the seventies is the appearance of monochrome paintings, or of restrained color and furthermore works that show a heightened sensibility to the texture of painting. This trend was particularly noticeable in the works of the artists of the Ecole de Seoul. Looking at this trend in the stream of art history, it may be said that the paintings of Yun Hyong-keun performed a role in this trend. That is because the lack of color variation or restrained color is a distinguished characteristic of this artist. Yun Hyong-keun also shows a noted sensibility towards the texture of the picture. His technique of painting directly on to raw canvas is nothing but an indication of this. In that sense the paintings of Yun Hyong-keun have the characteristics of the above mentioned trend.

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However, the prominent difference between his paintings and other artists' is that they have an artificial expression of non-artificiality in putting paint on canvas and in his consideration to texture. They also have a characteristic that makes you think they were formed on their own. It looks as if the artist only slightly assisted in the formation. This impression that the painting was formed naturally is a most distinguished further of Yun Hyong-keun's paintings.

The artist uses only two colors, one is umber and the other is blue. Those two colors are overlapped. Once I thought that as umber is the color of the earth and blue is the color of the sea or sky, Yun Hyong-keun could have symbolized nature in those colors but I feel now that this was too much my own opinion. Those two colors are not painted exactly over each other but there is in fact a gap between them, and this space creates a large surface. This surface looks as if it slowly erodes the raw canvas and grows on it. The shape of the surface is not fixed but it looks more momentary and temporary in form.

The impression that the paintings of Yun Hyong-keun gives is something like a power that spreads and deepens consuming endless time. It acts to wrap round those who see them and it also envelops spoken words.

Yusuke Nakahara, 1989