Trains of Thought: Yunghun Yoo’s Paintings of Connection and Parting at 839 Gallery

In 1967, philosopher and social theorist Michel Foucault delivered a seminal lecture outlining the concept of heterotopia. In Foucault’s view, a heterotopia is a “place without a place,” a space in which societal norms are both distorted and distilled, both reflected and transgressed. Among these heterotopias, Foucault named prisons, brothels, bars, cinemas, colonies and ships. Nearly half a century later, the artist Yunghun Yoo identified yet another heterotopia: the discursive Southern California transportation system.