Busan Biennale
The Busan Biennale is a biannual international contemporary art show that integrated three different art events held in the city in 1998: the Busan Youth Biennale, the first biennale of Korea that was voluntarily organized by local artists in 1981; the Sea Art Festival, an environmental art festival launched in 1987 with the sea serving as a backdrop; and the Busan International Outdoor Sculpture Symposium that was first held in 1991. The biennale was previously called the Pusan International Contemporary Art Festival (PICAF) before it launched.
The biennale has its own unique attribute in that it was formed not out of any political logic or need but rather the pure force of local Busan artists’ will and their voluntary participation. Even to this day their interest in Busan's culture and its experimental nature has been the key foundation for shaping the biennale’s identity.
This biennale is the only one like it in the world that was established through an integration of three types of art events such as a Contemporary Art Exhibition, Sculpture Symposium, and Sea Art Festival. The Sculpture Symposium in particular was deemed to be a successful public art event, the results of which were installed throughout the city and dedicated to revitalizing cultural communication with citizens. The networks formed through the event have assumed a crucial role in introducing and expanding domestic art overseas and leading the development of local culture for globalized cultural communication. Founded 38 years ago, the biennale aims to popularize contemporary art and achieve art in everyday life by providing a platform for interchanging experimental contemporary art.
SUH Yongsun
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관리자 2020-09-05 15:26
Born 1951 in Seoul, South Korea
Lives in Yangpyeong
SUH Yongsun, The Arrested Man, 2003, Oil on canvas, 250×200cm
SUH works with subjects of history, myth, war and people on canvas, with a presentation through vivid use of colors and rough textures. The scenes of people within historical events, or the images of people today living in cities, are presented in a dynamic composition. By overlapping events which happened in different times and spaces in his historical painting series, SUH puts a light on the sufferings of individuals caught in a maelstrom of history, to deliver the fetters of time on canvas. In the paintings depicting contemporary men along various symbols representative of the city, he displays the insecurities of people living under pressure. Through rough, formative language, SUH visualizes relationships and conflicts of human existence and the problems they cause. In the self-portrait series, his face is not only a reference to the artist himself, but broadly, it can be recognized as a looking glass into the history and era.
SUH’s work often holds a specific reference, either an event or a character in history. In the end, what we encounter through his canvas are the reflections on the universal human conditions present in the problems of human existence, sublimated by the artist’s unique formative language.