Busan-based artist U Jeong Seo's montage paintings are characterized by their ability to cross the boundaries between the real and the virtual, and merge different images and shapes to reconstruct a fragmented reality. Seo’s work emphasizes the expressiveness of sensation and perception, combining a wide range of social and personal experiences to form new visual narratives. Her montage technique visualizes the concept of multi-layered identities and ties in to the theme of multiple belongings. The artist's meticulous reflections on “ecological conditions” or “ecological civilizations” are rife with powerful allegories and metaphors for a reality where the virtual and the real, and truth and distortion, coexist. While Seo’s approach to the singularity of painting and its imagery may seem conservative, her narrative and its message of “a poetic approach to loss and healing,” as she puts it, are potent. Her body of work raises questions about the zeitgeist of art and the relationship between painting and image, and we cannot help but consider her fierce commitment to the microcosm of the canvas.