the house in the painting, the painting in the house

About Sun Young Byun

Optical Adventure The works by Sun Young Byun prove that painting can hold its own against interior design prove. The Korean artist playfully mixes Asian and European patterns, confusing our typical orientation and thus readying us for… Read more

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BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Optical Adventure

The works by Sun Young Byun prove that painting can hold its own against interior design prove. The Korean artist playfully mixes Asian and European patterns, confusing our typical orientation and thus readying us for an optical adventure. This journey flowers out of an overflow of styles: a calendar with Pop Art images by Roy Lichtenstein on a violet and pink flowered wallpaper, next to that a chair upholstered in budding blooms. A small table with grandmother’s white crocheted tablecloth bedecked with family photos, the characters in which Byon reveals only as white cut-out silhouettes. Of all things, the houseplants also remain white and look as they have been cut from the picture; these are empty spaces among the room’s opulent ornamentation.

As early as her painting studies, Sun Young Byun distanced herself from traditional motifs such as still lifes to search instead for everyday objects for her images that did not necessarily need to be carefully arranged. The more she tried to unjudgmentally combine opposites such as art and the everyday, luxury items and kitsch, the more experimental her selections and her way of dealing with the objects became. She began to turn an entire system of values on its head.

In her current works she plays with unusual perspectives of interior spaces. She conjures furniture, wallpapers, objects like vases and wall calendars, carpets, and doors into a mutual two-dimensional existence on the canvas. No perspectival sight lines or constructed back- and foreground divide or organize the colorful objects. Following the ideals of French legend Matisse, colorful effects and surface patterns weave themselves into a spectacular visual quilt. The perspectival illusion disappears because the artist dispenses with sharp dividers, constructed vanishing lines, and framing shadows, flooding the eye with decoration.

Idealism and reality, dream and everyday life begin to overlap in these unusual images. Sun Young Byun masterfully conducts the most varied traditions, cultures, and styles in a harmonious composition, an aesthetic challenge with new symbolic power.

Christina Wendenburg

VITA

1967	born in Seoul, South Korea
1986	Seoul Art High School, Seoul, South Korea
1991	BFA, Hong-Ik University, Painting Department, Seoul, South Korea
1994	MFA, Hong-Ik University, Painting Department, Seoul, South Korea
1996	teaching assistant, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, USA
1997	MFA, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, USA
1997-1999	professor, Savannah College of Art & Design, Savannah, Georgia, USA
2001-2003	instructor, Seoul Women’s University, Painting Department, Seoul, South Korea
2001	instructor, Hong-Ik University, Printmaking Department, Seoul, Südkorea
2000-03	instructor, Hong-Ik University, Painting Department, Seoul, South Korea
2004-06	Extraordinary Professor, Seoul Women’s University, Painting Department, Seoul, South Korea
since 2003	instructor, Dong-Guk University, Painting Department, Seoul, South Korea
	lives and works in Seoul, South Korea

Exhibitions

Solo Exhibitions

2008	Alexander Ochs Galleries, Beijing, China and Berlin, Germany
2006	ArtPark, Seoul, South Korea
2004	Lee Hwa Ik Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
2002	Gallery HYUNDAI, Window Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
	Gallery IHN, Seoul, South Korea
1995	Forum Gallery, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, USA
1993	SaGak Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
1992	Batangol Gallery, Seoul, South Korea

Group Exhibitions

2008	ART FORUM, Berlin,Germany
	Female Sensibility, Gallery ARTSIDE, Seoul, South Korea
2007	Pocheon Asia Biennale 2007, Pocheon, South Korea
	Art in philosophy, Sungkok art museum, Seoul, South Korea
	Taipei Art Fair, Taipei, Taiwan
	Recomposition of Masterpiece, Savina Museum, Seoul, South Korea
2006	Christmas wish, Sp Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
	Hybrid trend Contemporary Art Exhibition, Seoul Arts Center, Seoul, South Korea
2005	Magic, Art, Cho Sun Press Museum, Seoul, South Korea
	Sink into Space, Art Factory, Heiri Kyungkido, Seoul, South Korea
	Movement on silence, Gallery DOS, Seoul, South Korea
2004	Fiction, love - Ultra New Vision in Contemporary Art, MOCA, Taipei, Taiwan
	Exploration of Light & Colors, Seoul Arts center, Seoul, South Korea
2003	Plastic, Art Park, Seoul, South Korea
2002	Contemporary Art Fair, Central City Millenium Hall, Seoul, South Korea
1999	27th Bradley National Print Drawing Exhibition, Peoria, Illinois, USA
1998	Group Exhibition, D.M.I, Company, Michigan, USA
1997	Looking to the Far East, Juried Exhibition, Detroit Focus Market, Michigan, Michigan, USA
1996	Interdisciplinary Group Exhibition, Forum Gallery, Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, USA
1993	The 19th Exhibition of Seoul Contemporary Art Festival, Seoul, South Korea
1991	Balcony Group Exhibition, Gallery 2000, Seoul, South Korea
1990	Cupid Group Exhibition, Do-ol Gallery, Seoul, South Korea