Jeanie Yoo
by Pearl Marden
I met Jeanie Yoo at her art studio on Myrtle Avenue in Bushwick, sitting  between a nightclub and a coffee shop. I trailed behind her as she led me up a few flights of stairs, observing that her cardigan was on backwards, the buttons and pockets in the back. I admired the choice, inspired. She later told me, “Oh, both my shirts are backwards; I like it that way,” when I complimented the decision. We reached a large silver door in a long hallway of other large silver doors. It took her a moment to open it, trying various keys before choosing the correct one. “New apartment keys,” she said. This didn’t explain the eight or so other keys on her keychain clipped to the belt loop of her skinny jeans. I walked inside and was immediately transported to a world of dreamy color. I think perhaps Mazzy Star was playing, or something just as lovely.

I caught Jeanie in the midst of a very busy schedule, although she spoke about her days with ease, so you might never know. She had just gotten back from LA, where she was shooting a Nike campaign (chic). She was moving apartments the next day and then flying back to LA to shoot for another brand (chic) before the opening of her solo exhibition at Nuun, an apartment gallery in Brooklyn, this Sunday, May 24th (so chic). I asked when she would possibly have time to install. She responded with, “Install 1–5 pm, flight at 9.”


Jeanie graduated from Rhode Island School of Design in 2024, where she primarily worked in oil painting, but she recently started experimenting more with painting on silk using cold water–activated dye. She first learned the technique while taking an embroidery class in India. She learned about different types of fabric and dyes, and as we can see in some of the silk pieces she’s showing at Nuun, she adds hand-embroidered details on top of her paintings: lines and swirls of tiny stitches. When she was in India, she asked if she could take some of the dye home and try painting with it. “It won’t work,” her teachers told her. She did it anyway, and, inevitably, it did work quite well, I might add. She stretches the silk tightly across her studio walls so the ink doesn’t drip down the fabric.

Painting on silk has led Jeanie to experiment with her art in new ways. She’s trying to do more wearable pieces and showed me a photo of her friend Masa wearing one of her large silks. Pinned and wrapped around Masa’s body, the fabric looked almost three-dimensional, sculptural. I  asked about the piece in Masa’s hair, and Jeanie showed me a smaller square of silk with a face painted on it. She then asked if she could put it on me. Honored to suddenly be asked to model, she clipped the fabric to my hair and told me to look in the mirror. I was slightly startled by my reflection, partially because the effect worked a little too well. I was reminded of the old Snapchat face-swap filter; the painting, almost mask-like, felt uncanny and eerie. She said it somehow worked on everyone. “It’s my face,” she laughed.


She showed me the pieces in the exhibition. She hand-frames the smaller works, nailing the silk to wood, stretching it tightly from corner to corner. I adored the way she covered the nails, each one painted with thick white paint and wrapped with a tiny amount of thread. 

Her friends are helping with the install and making custom frames for her larger silks. These frames will stand on the floor and invite viewers to walk all the way around them, admiring how the pieces shift from one side to another and how the light shines through them. “It’s why my opening is during the day,” she told me.

As she showed me around her small studio, I asked if she still makes large-scale paintings. Last month, Jeanie showed a large 4’ x 5’ oil painting, We Were Made of Each Other, in Basta’s group show at PRIV.Y Gallery. She told me she usually keeps the piece at her parents’ house on Long Island, but it’s temporarily at her brother’s apartment in Greenpoint. She said it’s easier to paint smaller works in the city, joking that a painter’s practice eventually just becomes a storage issue until something sells. I suddenly imagined how nice her pieces might look on my wall.

She shares the studio with fashion designer Fiona Frohnapfel. They each get one side of the room, currently separated by Jeanie’s silks hanging wall to wall. She told me it’s actually nice to share a studio - Fiona is teaching her how to hem her pieces before the show, and in return Jeanie models for Fiona’s brand. “It works out,” she said <3.

She primarily paints abstract figures and portraits, her characters suspended in various emotional moments and moods. She layers bodies and limbs into vibrant compositions where light blues, yellows, pastel pinks, and seafoam greens ease into one another like a dream.

Go see Jeanie’s solo exhibition, Hang to Dry, running May 24 – June 14.

Nuun
Brooklyn, NY 11201






Jeanie Yoo (b. 2002: Long Island, NY) makes work that explore femininity and vulnerability through delicate figures and whimsical compositions and color palettes. In her own words, “My focus delves into three crucial relationships: with my inner self, with my physical body, and with the women in my life. My practice sways between representational figures and geometric abstract forms, embodying a tension that I try to reconcile with each work.”

Yoo received her BFA, Painting with Honors, from the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI in 2024. Her work has recently been included in exhibitions at Priv.vy Gallery, New York, NY (2026); Psychic Readings*, New York, NY (2025); Woods Gerry Gallery, Providence, RI (2024); and Providence Public Library, Providence, RI (2022). She was awarded the Florence Leaf Grant from the RISD Painting Department in 2024. Yoo currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.