Suh yongsun That was born in Seoul, Corea, In 1951, he has made his career by creating works that represent public, social and political issues based on his own understanding and experience.
Since entering the art scene in the early 1980s, Suh has long been indifferent to trends, and thus has been able to focus on the basic problems of representation as a communicative and emotional maneuver.
His interest in minority, urbanization and history issues has long been evident in his pictorial activities, for example, Visa Project, from 2002, refers to immigrants at the borders of nation-states, and Drawing and Thinking About Cheolam, 2001, points to the resurrection of a deserted coal mining region; Both projects were carried out after Suh joined the group of artists. halartec.
December 2016 in Seoul. Source: tricontinental
After studying painting at the National University de Seoul, began his career as an artist in 1979, reaching the art scene at the beginning of the 80s with a remarkable attention to current trends and the basic problems of humanity, representing in turn a communicative and emotional work.
While he was fond of the painting scene, he traveled to the cities of NY y Berlin, which strongly influenced his creations, since, although he began painting a series of pine trees, it did not take long to focus his interest on minority issues, urbanization and personal stories, since in these trips he was fascinated by other works that showed human figures crudely executed that often appeared masked.
Since then, his pictorial activities found the way, as the Korean artist chose to explore the portrait, the landscape, history, war, myth, and feelings, expressing humanity in a metropolitan environment, as well as for his historical series that he describes as historical accidents.
After this stage, his work was filled with history, myths, wars and people on canvas, with a presentation through the vivid use of colors and rough textures, while also venturing into the art of sculpture, which he developed under the same ideal with which he made his paintings.
Scenes of people within historical events, or images of people living in cities today, are presented in a composition dynamic, since it superimposes events that took place at different times and combines them with some of the personalities that we could meet today on our streets.
Thus, Suh yongsun sheds light on the sufferings of individuals trapped in a story, freeing them from the chains of time with her canvas, so that in the end her paintings show people's insecurities through a crude and formative language.
The Arrested Man, 2003. Source: Google Arts & Culture
Since then he has focused on his work while traveling nationally and internationally, including those United States, Germany, Japan y China. He has had numerous individual and group exhibitions.
In his own way, Suh is an observer of relationships and conflicts of human existence, so that his face, and those of the characters on his canvas, can be recognized more as a mirror of history and time than a simple painting in dense colors.
To this day, in his 70s, Suh continues to teach at the National Universityl from Seoul, where he instills the weight of the density of color, both in his work and in the current of Korean painting. During his long career, he has been selected as Artist of the Year by the National Museum of Modern Art y Contemporary de South Korea in 2009.
