Daniel Um

Daniel Um’s practice is shaped by his early experience of travelling and living across multiple countries, informing a sustained engagement with solitude, memory and displacement. Working primarily in oil and oil pastel, he creates atmospheric compositions in which solitary figures drift through dense, dreamlike environments suspended between observation and imagination. Built through layered and intuitive applications of paint, Um’s surfaces possess an almost luminous quality, with repetitive brushwork and heightened colour conveying subtle shifts in mood and emotional intensity. Influenced by Impressionism, German Romanticism, Korean ceramic traditions and contemporary abstraction, his works balance intimacy with distance, recalling spaces shaped as much by recollection as by personal lived experience.

Um was born in Seoul, South Korea in 2001, and received a BFA in Illustration from Parsons School of Design, New York, in 2024. He has completed residencies at the Painters Painting Paintings / Oostmeijer Residency, Amsterdam (2023); Silver Art Projects, New York (2024); CCA Andratx, Mallorca (2025); and The Cabin, Los Angeles (2025). Um has exhibited internationally with solo presentations including Fox in the Vineyard at The Cabin, Los Angeles (2024); Trails Left by the Moonlight at Linseed Projects, Shanghai (2024); Countryside Manners at Scroll, New York (2025); and Donkeys Know Everything at Collaborations, Copenhagen (2025). Selected group exhibitions include presentations at Linseed Projects, Shanghai; Galerie Hussenot, Paris; Latitude Gallery and Scroll NYC, New York; Make Room, Los Angeles; Turn Gallery, New York; and Hew Hood Gallery, London. His work is held in the public collection of JPMorgan Chase & Co., New York. Um currently lives and works in New York.