Artist Suh Yongsun (b. 1951) deals with a wide range of subjects, including portraits, landscapes, history, war, and mythology, but he is particularly known for his series depicting human figures in the city and his historicization series that visualize events in history.
Since the late 1970s, Suh has continued to explore Korean modernity by dealing with historical events and human figures living in cities, expanding them into the three sections of “matter, environment (nature), and mythology,” and reflecting on the conditions and meaning of contemporary life from the perspective of world history's universality.

Suh Yongsun covers a wide range of these themes, and through his tightly structured planes and intense color expressions, he sublimates issues of human existence into a distinctive artistic language.

Suh Yongsun, Inquiry, No Ryang Jin, Mae Wol Dang, 1991 ©MMCA

Suh Yongsun began working with pine trees in the early 1980s. His pine landscape paintings, which are both realistic and reminiscent of Asian traditional mountain watercolors, are not meant to reproduce actual nature, but rather to unravel the concept of pine trees and the experience of perception. Since then, the artist has been working on the series ‘The Diary of Nosangun (King Danjong)', a historicization of Danjong, since he accidentally visited Cheongryeongpo, the exile site of Danjong, around 1986.

In Cheongnyeongpo, the artist encountered and became interested in the tragic life of Danjong, the sixth king of Joseon, who ascended to the throne at a young age, passed the throne to his uncle, and died in exile in Yeongwol, Gangwon Province, before he was even twenty years old.

He was puzzled that there were no artworks about this event, so he took matters into his own hands and began collecting materials, searching for traces everywhere, and depicting them on canvas. At that time, historical paintings were rare in Korean contemporary art because they were not subject to the artist's interpretation or will, such as the purpose of inspiring national pride or being intertwined with power.

However, in contrast to the nature and purpose of conventional historical paintings, Suh sought to express human power, barbarism, and tragedy through historical paintings of the king Danjong. For example, Inquiry, No Ryang Jin, Mae Wol Dang (1991) is a work that concentrates the complex situations in Danjong's diary and presents them in a divided form on a single screen, revealing the artist's interest in subjective interpretation and subject matter through his intense use of color and expression.

Suh Yongsun, City – in the Bus, 1989, 1991 ©Korean Artist Project

In addition to this historicization, the artist also focused on the contemporary people living in the city of Seoul at the time. In the 1980s, when he began the series, Korea was undergoing rapid industrialization and urbanization, and Western commercial pop culture was entering the country.

The artist observed modern people in the city, which was experiencing rapid economic growth, while riding public transportation such as buses and subways, and captured them with strong primary colors that contrasted with their bored expressions.

At the same time, the artist left traces of the changes in Korean society, such as Coca Cola trademarks and McDonald's signs, on the canvas. Afterward, Suh traveled outside of Seoul to other metropolitan centers, such as Berlin, Beijing, and Manhattan, to capture the modern life in those landscapes.


Suh Yongsun, Potsdam Conference, 2012, 2015 ©Korean Artist Project

The Korean War, a recurring theme in Suh's paintings, is still a reality for all Korean living in the present, and it is also an event that is deeply embedded in Suh's personal history as he was born during the war. Suh depicts a series of situations from the Potsdam Conference, which marked the beginning of the Cold War, to the massacre of civilians during the Korean War, to the tension between North and South Korea after the ceasefire that have repeatedly increased and decreased.

The artist has been focusing on human figures such as ordinary people, prisoners of war, and young soldiers who struggled under the horrors of the war. His paintings deal with situations during and after the war, drawn from his own memories and those of his family, and are based on interviews with others who lived through the war. Starting with the Korean War, Suh has been documenting and remembering the history of community tragedies, such as the Japanese occupation and the Gyeyu-Jeongnan, through his paintings.


Suh Yongsun, Mago, 2009 ©Suh Yongsun Archive

Since then, Suh's work has moved beyond the history of mankind to focus on myths about the origin of mankind. In 2004, Suh's work on Korean mythology began in earnest when he began illustrating a newspaper series on Eastern mythology. For the artist, myths are not stories about gods, but rather stories that reflect our current lives and allow us to see the roots of our present.

The Mago Myth, which he has been working on, is a creation myth that states that Mago, the earth goddess and creator goddess in Korean folklore, created the heavens and the earth and gave birth to the Korean people. The artist creates scenes from the Mago myth based solely on his imagination in the absence of visual data. Since his exhibition at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon in 2009, he has been presenting sculptures, drawings, and paintings on the theme of the Mago myth.


Suh Yongsun, Self-Portrait, 2023 ©Topohaus

Suh Yongsun has been drawing self-portraits since he was learning to draw. The artist says that self-portraits are paintings that fail the moment they are drawn. He explains that it's similar to the myth of Sisyphus in that it's a painting that fails from the moment you start to draw it, and you keep failing, but somehow you keep drawing it. The reason he continues to draw, he says, is that each self-portrait leaves a slightly different spot in his mind.

As he says, Suh's numerous self-portrait series reveal differences, big and small. The self-portrait that shows him confidently painting in front of the canvas gradually transforms into a self-portrait that shows him gazing at the world, confronting, frustrated, accepting, and excited, and then reveals himself in the act of painting furiously.

Through these repeated self-portraits, the self is deconstructed, reunited, and reborn. His self-portraits are not just about the artist himself. It is also a fundamental work that underlies his entire work on ‘human beings.’

“The function of the work is a dialog between the artist and the viewer, and then a dialog between the viewer and the viewer, which reaches its ultimate completion. On the one hand, the painting depicts something that cannot happen in reality and therefore cannot be resolved.

When I'm in a situation where I don't know what to do, I experience a sense of catharsis when I paint, and the embarrassment disappears. It's a reaction to this reality and society, like my belief that it's okay to wear red on your face, a comfort, a stimulus, a way to get them to think in that way, and that's why I paint.”


Artist Suh Yongsun ©Seoul Economic Daily

Born in Seoul, Suh Yongsun Studied Western Painting at the College of Fine Arts of Seoul National University and the Graduate School. He worked as a professor at the College of Fine Arts, Seoul National University from 1986 to 2008, and currently holds the position of emeritus professor since 2016. His recent solo exhibitions are including “New Works” (ONE AND J. Gallery, Seoul, 2024), “My Name is Red” (Art Sonje Center, Seoul, 2024), “Suh Yongsun’s Mago, Searching for Goddess Mago in Our Minds (Seoul Herstory House Yeodamjae, Seoul, 2021), “Pain· Symptoms· Signs, The Remaking of History in Suh Yongsun’s Painting” (Art Center White Block, Paju, Korea, 2019), and more. And He was selected as the MMCA 2009 Artist of the Year and held his solo exhibition at the MMCA, Gwacheon. His works are in the collections of leading institutions around the world, including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea, Seoul Museum of Art, Busan Museum of Art, and more.

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