Portraits of AI Humanity in the Post-Human Era, 2024 (포스트 휴먼 시대의 초상)
As the role and impact of artificial intelligence rapidly expand in contemporary society, ethical and philosophical reflection on this technology becomes increasingly important. Stanford University's Human-Centered AI (HAI) focuses on studying the impact of AI on human life. However, the term "human-centered" raises ethical concerns about anthropocentrism, which values all natural entities solely as means for human benefit, leading to environmental destruction and climate disasters. In posthumanism, Gilles Deleuze's non-human ontology critiques this anthropocentrism and calls for a new ethical consciousness that applies equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) to humans, animals, the natural environment, and inorganic machines.
This new body of work transfers AI-generated images onto canvas and blends them with painting techniques to visualize
philosophical questions and ethical discussions about how humans, nature, and AI companion robots can coexist in a non-anthropocentric perspective. Exploring interactions between human and non-human entities, this exhibition offers viewers a new perspective and prompts deep reflection on how we envision and prepare for the future.
Painting as Non-territorialities (무경계의 회화) , 2023
I am interested in the ethical issues regarding the treatment of Artificial intelligent robots as companions, and pets which could become an indispensable part of human life very soon. This project touches on the issues of the quasi human being, which can blur the boundary between human and non-human and the actual and virtual reality, and how they force us to dispel any pre-existing understandings and well-disposed presuppositions in order to adapt them as our new future. The new body of work was featured in my solo exhibitions at the Gallery Flux (Seoul) and the Gallery J (Cheonan) in April and May, 2023 in South Korea.
‘Painting as non-territorialities’ is an exprimental painting project that explores ontological aespect of painting by combining Korean painting aesthetics with Western painting tradition. This project is inspired by Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophical concept of Non-territorialities in which territory is a ‘malleable site of passage ‘ which encompasses double movement of deterritorialization and reterritorialization as mobile assemblages. For Deleuze’s aesthetics of sensation, art is created in the plane of immanence that is ‘non-thought within thought.’ ‘Painting as non-territorialities’ happens in the One-all of the plane of immanence which is the pre-philosophical ‘amplification of thought’ and a performative thought which must confront and restore chaos to become sensory. I assemble Korean painting techniques such as Aisan Ink and Coloured painting techniques with Western painting mideums to endorse painting ontological meaning as an Chaosmos or Non-territorialities.
Time of Events (사건의 시간)

Time of Events refers to what French Philosopher Gilles Deleuze calls ‘time image’ in which sensory motor schema collapses. In this time image, the truth and false, I undoubtably believe, becomes indistinguishable and I am forced to rethink and act differently. This presents a series of different work expressing the violence of sensation stemming from the dissonance of recognition. Regardless of whether the events are big or small, the images of the work are questions about how I would react against the events. Perhaps, this moment might be a chance to encounter the real which is impossible to recognize with well- organized systems and preconceived ideas. This can be a time for reassembling our lives in an entirely new and different way. My primary painting medium is the traditional Korean painting called "Bunche" which refers to a multilayering technique, using powder colour pigments mixed with water glue on Korean Mulberry paper.
Return of the Real (실재의 귀환)
In Return of the Real, I present a series of paintings which portray the tensions in brutal boxing, mixed martial arts and wrestling matches. The extreme moments of being punched, choked and kicked are transferred into thought-provoking events through the painting process. These images can be uncomfortable and traumatic, yet they may be able to provide us an opportunity to rethink our lives in a different way beyond predetermined social criteria and expectations surrounding us, which sometimes make us feel as if we were being situated in the fights.
The fighting images symbolise the events, which can lead to inevitable changes of our lives in a similar way of circulation of the material energies of Yin and Yang in Taoist philosophy. In terms of the colour choices, red represents active energy of Yang (male) and blue symbolises receptive energy of Yin (female), and together they shape our lives and natural world through complementary interconnections. I combined Korean ink and coloured painting techniques together for my new paintings to experiment with their incompatible material characteristics in an entirely new and different way.
The title of this show has originated from the article of the American art critic and historian Hal Foster in 1996. Informed by his critics on the 20th century post-war avant-garde art, the notion of the traumatic real in Abject Art has heavily influenced my own art practice since I was working in San Francisco in 2013. Through my PhD research in the aesthetics of French Philosopher Gilles Deleuze, I have developed the concept of the Real which is ultimately affirmative and transferable. In Deleuze's Transcendental Realism, art is provisionally defined as Agencement machines which operate by connecting different fields and giving the connected assemblage a new sense through experimental processes.
Feb, 2019
Young Maeng
Fractured Affection- Al Real Doll
I am interested in the ethical issues regarding the treatment of Artificial intelligent robots as companions, which could become an indispensable part of human life very soon. This project touches on the issue of the quasi human being, which can blur the boundary between human and non-human and the actual and virtual reality, and how they force us to dispel any pre-existing understandings and well-disposed presuppositions.
Fractured Affection (분열된 정감)
My project, Fractured Affection, explores questions about your reaction when an object you hold dear is broken, or a strongly held belief betrays you. As French philosopher Gilles Deleuze states, this might be the moment which leads you to encounter the real through involuntary violence. This series of paintings includes broken pieces of everyday life objects and continuously drying flowers, which express their own beauty and existence as they are.
Sandys (The Process of painting Sandys)
2012 -2014 Bunche Painting on Korean Paper
The Memory of San Francisco (Bunche on Korean paper, 18" x 24", 2014)
Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring (Bunche on Korean Paper, 2015)
2010 -2012 Perfumed Violence

I am interested in the invisible form of violence which stems from social criteria and pressure from dominant value. I call it “perfumed violence”. My work Perfumed Violence was inspired by the Filipino filmmaker, Kidlat Tahimik whose film is titled “Perfumed nightmare (1977).” His film is playful and humorous but relates to social criticism and includes a bitter satire on post-neocolonial world. This neo-colonial power disguises themselves as progress and convenience for the future.
Life in peace never seems to be attainable in excessive capitalism which has been producing gluttonous desire. The uncontrollable, surging gold hair is trying to grab whatever it wants. This symbolizes unsatisfied desire in the highly capitalistic society which has obliterated indigenous Korean cultures and values. Peace never sits in company with unattainable desire. Contemporary interpretation of peace is another name of the unattainable.