Hyeseong Cho

Hyeseong Cho is a Seoul-born artist currently based in Toronto. She explores the depths of human emotion drawn from personal experiences. She holds both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Painting from Hong-ik University, Seoul, and has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Korea and Canada. Using recurring motifs of windows and doors, Cho’s work probes themes of human vulnerability and existential anxiety, inviting viewers to reflect on the absurdity of existence and contemplate hidden realities and fundamental questions.

Cho draws inspiration from the short stories of Franz Kafka, grounding her semi-abstract compositions in psychological and existential narratives. Many of her painting titles—The Street Window, The Sudden Walk, The Castle, among others—directly reference Kafka’s works, establishing a conceptual bridge between literary and visual storytelling. Working primarily with oil paint, charcoal, and oil sticks, she embraces both expressive density and delicate translucency, often employing a restrained black-and-white palette to emphasize the tension between presence and absence, solidity and void. Vivid colors occasionally emerge, highlighting particular forms in a way that is at once playful and unsettling—echoing the dark, absurd humor that underlies even Kafka’s bleakest tales.