SEOUL.- ONE AND J. Gallery is presenting Suh Yongsun’s solo exhibition ”New Works” from May 12th to June 23rd, 2024. Suh Yongsun (b. 1951, Korea) has been exploring the subject of human nature since the 1980s, and over the last forty years, he has created a spirited body of work. This new exhibition “New Works” features works that reflect on the artist’s time living in the cities of Seoul, New York, Beijing, and Paris between 2007 and 2024. These works capture Suh’s emotions while living in these cities and his wide-ranging observations of himself and the people who live there.

Suh Yongsun has long focused on capturing specific scenes within his paintings. Recently, however, he has adopted a more unrestricted approach that involves incorporating his observations of people and the city into his paintings. Although the emotion that initiates the painting remains reflected in the work, it does not determine its overall direction. In particular, in the process of painting what he has observed, Suh Yongsun constantly reflects on what feelings he is experiencing in relation to the object or situation at hand. He strives to pull out from the painting that which he seeks to express in earnest, and for this end, he adopts a more expanded perspective for surveying reality. Although Suh Yongsun’s paintings depict a universal reality that all can relate to, they cannot be understood simply as realistic paintings. His paintings—which are constructed via distorted expressions featuring vivid colors, rough outlines, exaggerated perspective, and fields of color without backgrounds—are unrealistic yet simultaneously seem to amplify a sense of reality, and in this way, they make our familiar, everyday reality feel strange.

Suh Yongsun’s City series began in Seoul in the 1980s. This period in Seoul’s history was marked by economic growth and the introduction of surprising new technologies, such as color TV. Indeed, this was a transitional period during which Seoul gradually went from being black and white to ablaze with color, and relations between individuals, including members of different generations, became freer. Suh Yongsun, who was impacted in a complex way by this emerging social environment, began using intense colors and unrestrained brushwork to paint the urban scenery of this period, an approach that he has continued through the present. After retiring from his position as a professor at a college of fine arts in 2009, he traveled extensively both domestically and abroad, gaining a wealth of experiences and widening his perspective on the world. Although he believes that each city is differentiated by its unique environment, he also feels that they are united by their universal trait of being places where people live their lives. Therefore, by observing the unique ways in which individuals survive in the city, he is able to translate the emotions of each urban space onto the canvas.

“I truly enjoy observing people living in cities, and I’m particularly curious about urban life and existence. Manhattan, in particular, stands out for its unparalleled diversity, even compared to other cosmopolitan cities around the world. It’s a place that prompts reflection on humanity, race, and ethnicity, evoking a unique sense of curiosity.” - Suh Yongsun, “Validation of Being” interview, 2024

Suh Yongsun often leaves the familiar space of his studio to also create works overseas. He has stated that he enjoys being in unfamiliar environments, as it allows him to focus on himself more. Suh considers where and what he can observe and record, and he works to produce conditions and opportunities that will be most conducive to his endeavors. Recently, he spent three months in New York, where he worked on paintings for the exhibition “New Works”. During this trip, New York’s public transportation infrastructure—including the N Line connecting Manhattan to Brooklyn, where he primarily worked—served as one of the focal points of his urban observations. All the elements of the city—from daily life to politics, the economy, and work—form the tightly woven web of interrelations that is a transportation network. Suh Yongsun likened this transportation network to a “bloodstream” that is the energy source keeping these cities in motion. He observed the New York subway during different times, from rush hour to some of the least busy times of the day, to create his new works N Line 1–3 (2023–2024) and 14th St. Station (2020–2024). In these works, we can see people wearing masks that had become more common following the COVID-19 pandemic, people slouched over and staring at their phones, and people standing up while leaning and staring off into space. After getting on the subway, riders assume a uniform posture while submitting their bodies to the demands of a disciplined system until they reach their destination. Although Suh witnesses these scenes from a neutral standpoint, he also seeks to reveal the collective attitudes and postures of people living in the modern city, where individual will is largely obscured.

More recently, Suh has been moving between different cities while working on his paintings. As the environment around him changes, his mode of expression has also undergone an organic transformation. Speaking about his time spent near a construction site in New York earlier this year, Suh stated that he is enjoying using the colors that he regularly encountered there in his current color palette and that the colors and shapes he paints on his canvases have also become more audacious. Likewise, this new environment also enabled him to experiment with new types of work, such as Self-Portrait 1 (2024), which was painted on scraps of pressboard that he collected from a construction site. This work, which transcends the confines of a standard canvas, brings the blank space around the painting into the painting itself, granting the viewer the freedom to move between the blank space and the painting. Just as the subconscious mind instinctively seeks to form connections between fragmented faces, each individual is able to experience the visual enjoyment of attempting to draw the connected self-portraits one sees in one’s imagination.

The subjects of Suh Yongsun’s urban landscapes and self-portraits are all people, and for him, exploring human nature is both the source of his artistic practice and a perpetual question about the “confirmation of his own existence.” Speaking about the lives of modern people, Suh stated, “When it comes to our own selves, our imminent problem for the day would be whether we reach our destination today or simply living out the day rather than the life and death issue of others.” He uses “art” as a healthy way to release the draining emotions and thoughts emanating from modern society so that they do not accumulate inside of him. Indeed, he has stated that “what we need as humans, who live by letting countless thoughts flow through us every second, is art.” As the title of the exhibition “New Works” implies, Suh Yongsun has continuously been producing new works to serve as a medium for sharing his thoughts with the world. In this way, Suh is able to present both himself and viewers with new moments, and he enables us to imagine a new day that breaks with the present-day reality, where we seem to always be headed toward some fixed destination.

Suh Yongsun (b. 1951, lives and works in Yangpyeong, Korea) received his B.F.A (1979) and M.F.A (1982) in Painting from Seoul National University in Seoul. He served as a professor at Seoul National University of College of Fine Arts (1986-2008) and is currently a professor emeritus at Seoul National University (2016-present). Suh has held solo exhibitions at ONE AND J. Gallery, Seoul (2024); Art Sonje Center, Seoul (2023); Seoul Herstory House Yeodamjae, Seoul (2021); Art Center White Block, Gyeonggi (2019); Arko Art Center, Seoul (2016); Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul (2015); Hakgojae Gallery, Seoul (2015) and others. Participated in numerous group exhibitions featuring his artwork at Pace Gallery, Seoul, (2024); Arko Art Center, Seoul (2023); Seoul Museum of Art(SeMA), Seoul (2023); Art Sonje Center, Seoul (2022); Busan biennale 2020, Busan (2020) and many more. Suh has received awards from Arko Art Center Representative Artist, Korea (2016); Lee Jung Seop Art Award, Korea (2014); Artist of the Year, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Korea (2009) and others. His works are in the permanent collections of MMCA, Korea; SeMA, Korea; Busan Museum of Modern art, Korea; Daegu Art Museum, Korea; Suwon Museum of Art, Korea; Seoul National University Museum, Korea; OCI Museum, Korea; Gyeongnam Art Museum, Wu-Guanzhong Museum annexed Gallery, Singapore.