David Heo is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice moves across painting, collage, installation, murals, and community-centered projects. Through these forms, he explores how inherited histories and personal memory shape contemporary life. Drawing from Korean folklore and Western painting traditions, Heo creates layered compositions that move between the intimate and the cinematic, where everyday moments become vessels for larger questions of identity and belonging.

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His visual language is built through recurring figures such as snarling dogs, anxious tigers, and fleeing rabbits, which function as emotional protagonists rather than fixed symbols. These characters shift between vulnerability and resilience, allowing each work to hold multiple emotional perspectives at once. Color is central to this language, appearing as atmosphere and expression, as well as a field of feeling shaped by his interest in nature, motion, and emotional contrast. In a time that can feel increasingly dark, Heo treats color as a gesture of vitality and public generosity, using it to create moments of warmth and recognition.

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Beyond the studio, Heo collaborates with cultural institutions, brands, and public spaces to create murals, installations, and participatory projects that expand where and how art can be experienced. Rather than treating these works as separate from his studio practice, he sees them as extensions of the same inquiry, using color and storytelling to transform everyday environments into places of curiosity, connection, and reflection.

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Born and raised in Georgia, David Heo developed his practice in Chicago. He holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has exhibited widely across the United States and internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include Realation Space in Seoul (2024), Hashimoto Contemporary in New York (2023), and the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids (2023). Heo's work has been featured in group exhibitions at the Korean Cultural Center of Chicago (2025), the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago (2022), and Half Gallery in Los Angeles (2022). His work has been commissioned by brands and organizations including Vans, Ace Hotel, the Chicago Bulls, and Lotte Hotels. Heo’s practice has received international attention, with features in Vogue Portugal, VISLA Magazine, and other publications.