O Yoon

In 2010, complete collection of O yoon was published by collaborative works and well-known poet Kim Chi-Ha also joined the project.

The titles of his works showed his style who paid attention to the lives of common people: e.g. ⟨Dawn of Labour⟩(노동의 새벽), ⟨The land⟩(대지), ⟨The song of sword⟩(칼노래) and ⟨The lemures⟩(원귀도). Though he failed to attain magnificent attention, his works have gained much larger attention since 2000s.

Yet, O Yoon is obvious in having a clear objective of appropriating the Si-Wang painting within the Hwa-Um Temple. O Yoon’s Hell Paintings indeed share the same concept of people suffering due to the sins that have led to their punishments. However, this Si-Wang painting lacks a commonality as to what kind of sins were created by those that are suffering. When referencing to the memo that O Yoon includes within his 1982 Marketing 3, it is apparent that O Yoon’s intentions within his artworks lie on the utilization of them as a means of conveying a message, likewise to a language, as he addresses his period of abstinence from art between Reality and Reality and Utterance – (translation) “... How art restores the function of language has been my question for the longest time…”  As such, contrary to the Si-Wang painting, O Yoon’s Hell Paintings focus exclusively on the then Koreans’ influence of Western capitalism and their consumerism, which O Yoon most definitely considered as sins.

His works failed to gain enough attention before his death, which was later revalued as the icon of people's arts in the 1980s since the decade referred to the transition to the democracy in South Korea.

The Marketing Series was published over the span of two years within the early 1980s. In 1980, O Yoon published Marketing 1: Hell Painting (지옥도) as well as Marketing 2: Paint (발라라), and in 1982 Marketing 3: Dress (걸쳐라), Marketing 4: Household Appliances (가전제품), and Marketing 5: Hell Painting (지옥도). All five paintings of the Marketing series address the changing socioeconomic landscape of Korea, and specifically aim to critique the influence of Western capitalism and the consequent rise of consumerism in Korea. A discrepancy can be identified between the three works Marketing 2; 3; 4 and the two Hell Paintings. While the former three works each address a target to satirize a specific consumer product and/or the consumer, the latter Hell Paintings include multiple different consumer products within the artwork itself. Taking Marketing 2, for example, there exists an explicit depiction of a woman with makeup applied on her face in the center of the drawing. As such, Marketing 2 has a single consumer product that is critiqued within, as well as staying true to explicitly satirizing the domain of consumerism stated in the title. On the other hand, however, the Hell Paintings differ in that they not only contain multiple facets of consumerism within, but also that their critique is focused on the more broader system of capitalism. As these works contain more nuanced satirical elements that incorporate multiple facets of consumerism, they differ from the non-Hell Painting Marketing Series in that they require the audience to be further engaged with the paintings in order for there to exist full comprehension of the paintings and their message.

Oh Yoon (in Hangul: 오윤, April 13, 1946 – July 5, 1986) was a South Korean painter whose pieces focused on peoples' art. It was during the 1980s when military officials seized power and repressed opposition, notably in the Gwangju massacre in 1980. Hence, his artworks largely expressed interests in the joys and sorrows of citizens during the 1970s and 1980s.

Born in 1946, he went to Department of Arts majoring in sculpture at Seoul National University. His father was a novelist, Oh Young-su. It is said he was greatly influenced by his grandfather and uncle, the great master of Dongrae crane dance. Dongrae crane dance is one of the most famed Korean traditional dances which describes the movement of cranes originated from Dongrae, current Busan.