David Heo is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice moves across painting, collage, installation, and community-centered projects. He uses each medium as a way to explore how memory, culture, and emotion take visual form. Drawing from Western art history and Korean folklore, he builds carefully constructed compositions that balance immediacy and restraint. His images feel cinematic and intimate at once, inviting viewers into scenes where personal narrative and collective history quietly meet.

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Heo’s visual language is shaped by recurring symbols rooted in Korean iconography and Jungian archetypes. The snarling dog, anxious tiger, and fleeing rabbit reappear as emotional stand-ins for conflict, vulnerability, and desire. Color functions as both structure and mood, reflecting the clarity of Matisse while carrying the contemplative spirit of Dansaekhwa. Through dense surfaces and deliberate gestures, each work becomes a slow record of attention, developed through sustained observation and revision.

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Working beyond traditional studio boundaries, Heo extends this interdisciplinary approach into collaborative and site-specific projects that bring art into everyday life. Murals, public programs, and community gatherings transform ordinary places into settings for conversation and shared experience. Across these varied forms, he treats art as a social practice grounded in care, vibrancy, and civic empathy.

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Born in Georgia and based in Chicago, David Heo is an artist whose work explores the intersections of mythology, memory, and modern identity. 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 also 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 practice has received international attention, with features in Vogue Portugal, VISLA Magazine (Seoul), and more.