[Studio walkthrough]

Suh Yong Sun: Welcom. It's been a long time.

Suh Yong Sun: This is the first studio, and these are my self-portraits I was working on for an exhibition. But because of another exhibition, I had to leave them like this. I will release some of them in an exhibition next autumn. Would you like to take a look another studio over there?

Suh Yong Sun: This studio was built without a firm design, so it's hot in summer and cold in winter. But, because of the glass, it gives me a good light effect. When I need a bright light for my painting, it's a good place. It is good for big paintings, but it's not good to work in summer or winter. I think it's a good place to work in spring or in autumn. Shall we move on to the third studio?

Suh Yong Sun: This is the latest one. I was going to use it as a storage to keep my paintings but changed my mind in the middle of constructing. I thought I might use it for a studio because there is a big wall here, so the design was changed a little bit. I think if my idea changes at the design stage, it influences the construction to the end.

Lee In Beom: I am a curator and a college professor, Lee In Beom. Today is Friday, May 9th, 2014. I am here to interview artist, Suh Yong Sun, in Moonori where his studio is located. He was born during the Korean war and grew up in a devastated town on the outskirts of Seoul. Since graduating from the College of Fine Arts in Seoul National University, he has been actively working as an artist for almost 40 years. Um... Then, from now on, we will talk with Mr. Suh about his life and his art.

Lee In Beom: It's very nice to see you Mr. Suh. First of all, where and when were you born? Let's begin with your childhood.

Suh Yong Sun: What I remember about my childhood is...I don't remember before the age of five or six but anyway, after that, I think I spent most of my teenager period in a suburb of Seoul. I spent most of my adolescent period there which was difficul to be called a rural area or a downtown.

My father was born in Younggwang, Jeollanam-do province and grew up in Japan. He came to Seoul later but got married to my mother in Manju before Korea was emancipated from Japan, and moved to Seoul again. Now I think my parents left their hometown and moved to here and there, and that influenced my childhood.

And in my memory, the place where I grew up, a suburb of Seoul, was...now I think it was where I couldn't find anything traditional or cultural. It was not a farming village nor a city. It was just surrounded by mountains and open fields. So, even though I am an artist now, I have no memories about any visual or cultural experience in my childhood. I think it is unique but it was my childhood.

One more thing is uh... as I grow older, I re-organize my memories about my childhood. It is because I was born during the Korean war, I think I re-organize my memories about how Korea looked like as I grow old. I remember I was staring blankly at the US army who was moving to Uijeongbu. I think it was one of the typical scenes we could see in modern Korea. As I remember, many people who fled from the war came back from rural areas and built small towns near Seoul in 50's, around the time when I entered an elementary school.

And there were many people who came to set up their new lives. They built illegal houses and used electricity without permission. Some of them used to sell rubber bands in Dongdaemun market for a living. They were struggling to survive. And also, I saw many weak little girls and elderly people who couldn't stand the cold and died in freezing winters. I also remember that there was a cemetery, a big cemetery. In the process of removing the cemetery, I saw workers moving the decomposing corpses. I think it was some unique experience about life and death.

Lee In Beom: So, in one word, you spent your childhood on the scars of the Korean war.

Suh Yong Sun: Right, but, when I was young, I didn't even know that it was the situation after the war. However, as I think about it over and over, especially as I grow older, I am finding out that it was how we looked after the war.

Lee In Beom: Uh, you grew up in the ravages of the war. Um... How was education? Could you please tell us if there was any special reason that made you to study art in a college?

Suh Yong Sun: When I was young, there were not enough books and schools were running on three shifts. Especially, since my parents were the generation who had to leave their parents early and could not get good education, it was hard for me to have books around. However, I remember that I had some chances to read books at my friend's home. And later, as towns were forming around Seoul little by little, now it's called Mia-dong, Dobong-gu, anyway, as the towns were forming, I used to borrow books from neighbors.

Especially, there were Japanese books translated into Korean, and I remember some of the books I read, for example, Samkukji (Records of the Three Kingdoms), Crime and Punishment, and also translated Arc of Triumph and Thomas Mann's novels, published by Eulyoo, a publishing company. I was only an elementary school student, but I thought they were very interesting and I also read novels in newspapers as well. Especially the illustrations of the novels. Later I found they were written by Park Jong Hwa. Anyway, I think those illustrations somehow influenced me.

Lee In Beom: How was the educational environment? Especially, um... related to the reason why you studied art, do you have any special experience, or do you remember anything about it?

I also think about it many times. There are some specific facts and some ambiguous reasons why I chose to enter an art college to became an artist. But to be more specific, I failed to enter a college several times and was 25 years old when I finished my military service. Then, I started to think about what I would do for my whole life. That time, I contemplated if I would enter a college or have a job to support my family. Since I was the only man in my family, I bore the burden of supporting my family a lot.

One day, right after discharg from the army, I was reading a newspaper at my friend's house and found an article about early Korean artists like Lee Jung Sup and Park Su Geun. I think it was the time when I started to think that art might be worth doing for a living. It was because of that, I thought re-entering a college might be difficult, since I stopped studying and spent long time in the army.

But, at the same time, I also thought that I should enter a college anyway to be treated well in society. I think, most of the people in Korea thought that entering a college is a must at that time, and it influenced me as well. Now I think, I did not think deeply about my own life, and was easily affected by the social stereotype and my family's wish. Anyway, since I always got better grades than others' in art classes, I naturally thought that it can be an advantage to enter a college. So, the reasons I mentioned were combined and made me to start studying art, I guess.

Lee In Beom: Were you aware that you had artistic talent when you were young.

Suh Yong Sun: Now I think the thing called talent is very funny. I mean, we think talent is a bit of the sense about shapes, not about the nature of art. I might not be the one who can judge, but we say talent is that, I guess, once a child draws cartoons a lot or draws shapes of things well. Teachers give good grades so he or she doesn't have to practice it a lot.

Lee In Beom: I guess you are saying that surviving was a very important issue in your adolescence and you chose to become an artist as a result.

Suh Yong Sun: I think it is very contradictory. I was browsing a newspaper to find information about learning skills to drive heavy vehicles because I heard that I might be able to earn money and improve my economic status, if I go to the Middle East with these skills. But what eventually influenced me was the article about artists, even though they were worlds apart.

And at that time, there was nearly no one who could give me advice and even my parents did not step into my decision about my future. They were like adhering to a non-interference policy. They just let me choose my future job. So I was confused between the two opposing ways of life. One job that lets me survive and the other that I wanted to follow even though I saw many tragic lives of the artists who died after the Korean war.

Lee In Beom: Then, how did you start to take art classes in earnest? Please tell us about your experience in art classes in Seoul National University.

Suh Yong Sun: Well, at the beginning, I had no idea about I could enter a university...I mean an art college. The information about it did not circulate amongst ordinary people, and I didn't know what to do to enter an art college. So I found an art class in my town through one of my friends and took some classes for one or two month. But I stopped it for a while due to money problems. But in the summer, I buckled down to take art classes at a private art academy in Choongmu-ro.

Lee In Beom: You might have worked on drawing plaster models a lot.

Suh Yong Sun: One thing I regret as an artist is that I did not try to express anything from my own inspiration, even though I was dreaming of becoming an artist. I just focused on the subjects needed for the entrance examination. Now I regret that. Anyway, being good at plaster drawing was the most important aim at the cram school and watercolor paint was the next stage. Since the curriculum was targeting the entrance exam, I practiced a lot for one and half years.

Lee In Beom: Anyway you entered the university through the fierce competition. What do you think you learned at the art college in Seoul National University.

Suh Yong Sun: I think it was very competitive to enter university. First of all, after entering university, even though I had put lots of effort to get there, things were not settled around me, so I spent almost 2 years for nothing. And at the end of the sophomore year, I was nearly able to do nothing in the school.

My grades were not good, and since I hardly went to school, I lost interest in school. So, for the first 2 years, the classes and the curriculum did not motivate me to study that much. However, the classes in art college that time were very free, so my grades were somehow not so bad . So, I think, even though there are always complicated systems, personal life is somehow fit it with them.

At that time when the sophomore year was coming, I finally realized that I should get something from this school, and started to worry about my future after graduating from school. It was second semester of my sophomore year when I realized that I was an art college student.

Then, I started to study, and several articles about art reviews that I read influenced me. For example, there was a surrealistic article and other articles about virtuous philosophy that I read in books. Another one was a critical article written by Bang Geum Taek. He insisted that Korean fine art was out of place with mentioning some of my teachers' names. When I read it, I felt that so called university system that I was studying in, was related to the art world outside. Since I finally realized it in the second semester of the sophomore year, I think it was pretty late.

One more thing is, around the time, I think it was Lee Kyung Sung, I read his article about an artist, Jang Uk Jin's a bit odd and somehow morphologically creative performances and followed it. When I was about enter senior year, around 1977 and 78, the art curriculum in college was almost fixed on abstract art for the senior grades. I think, the so called curriculum in art college was framed like starting from concrete drawing such as still-life and portrait in freshmen and sophomore years and moving to abstract art in junior and senior years.

So, elderly teachers who specialized in abstract art taught junior and senior year students, and freshmen and sophomore students were taught basic drawing by instructors or took liberal arts classes. So, it was very natural to learn abstract art in junior and senior year in the school system. Now I think it was very strange but I became a part of it because it was a general flow during the time...

Lee In Beom: You have painted cities or people, self-portrait, and myth as subjects, did you have any special reason that encouraged you to focus on those paintings in your youth?

Suh Yong Sun: I guess... I showed various attitudes at that time. For example, I neither had a good role model to be an artist after graduating college, nor had a mentor who taught me what to do. I just participated in an exhibition after graduating school. Since there were not many chanced to join exhibitions, in my case, I tried to make a name through some art contests. But I think those were not matching with what I really wanted to do.

I mean, even when I was in college, I don't know what influenced me, maybe some books. I had a desire to express the scenes of typical cities and people who live in cities, but I think they were not well completed. So, while I was working on that, I used to draw abstract paintings, following the flow in art colleges.

When I was about to graduate, I used to be interested in subjects related to Korea and the Orient, where I was born in. But I chose to be an artist of Western painting style. My decision was at odds with my desire. I think I was very confused and disconcerted when I had to chose my specialty, either Oriental painting or Western painting.

Even though I couldn't find a clear answer, I chose Western art as my specialty anyway, because I felt Western art explores new things more than the Oriental art does. But, on the other hand, I had the thought that it was somewhat contradictory that I chose Western art as a Korean, who is from the Orient. I graduated from college without any clear answer, and the question followed me for a long time.

While studying in a graduate school, I used to think about the question and tried to combine the two in my paintings. And I finally chose the pine tree as the answer. [check] The reason why I chose the pine tree was, it surely influenced by the environment about me, but the art form I was touched was some Chinese artists' paintings.

Especially, there was a good art book of an artist named Shitao who lived between the end of Ming dynasty and the beginning of Qing dynasty. When I saw his paintings I felt the dignity of nature, and later, through the excellent observation and lucid touch shown in Banqiaozhengxie's paintings, I realized that there was a good form of art but I couldn't express that with my western art tools. And the result of my trial to overcome the difference was the pine tree paintings.

On the other hand, in the middle of 70's, the philosophy was related to flow of the art in college. Now I think, conceptual art or the logical pursue of minimalism, and analyses of language which used to have impact on the art in the US, influenced Korean art.

I might be able to say that I was influenced by the books I read in college, and during my graduate school years. I was very interested in how the philosophical logic flowed into art through art critiques. So, as those ideas were combined, I even had faith that even though I create images on a flat canvas, my paintings can show the cross section of reality that we face in the nature clearly.

I mean, I might have thought ideologically that images can be combined with reality. And I tried to transfer the pure images of reality to canvases a lot. Even though the actual reality was not that pure, I think I was influenced by language. It was, like in phenomenology, I might have thought the word "pureness" as a transparent image that shows nothing but a clear reality.

Lee In Beom: You mean, while you were painting the pine tree series, right?

Suh Yong Sun: Right. While I was working on the series, as I said before, I also focused on cities and people like I did in college. So, in the same year I worked on pine trees, I drew people in cities and I was also interested in politics on the other hand. So, in some way, I don't think my career was logically well developed step by step.

Lee In Beom: I guess 1986 was an important turning point for you. With the start of painting Cheongnyengpo which is in Youngwol, Kangwon province, I think it was when you started to focus on history in earnest. Did you have special experience about it ? How did you start to go all out for historical paintings?

Suh Yong Sun: There were various reasons but the most representative one was analysis and doubt about classical Western art. I think I had a sense of inferiority about it. It was because when I was in college, even though I was not a hard working student, I felt differences between the Oriental and the Western when I saw some fancy Renaissance paintings through slides in classes. It was a kind of burden for me, even though I did not study about it hard.

One more thing is, as you just said, as we came to the end of 70's, minimalism was brought to a boil in major colleges in Seoul, especially in the case of white monochrome and Lee Woohan's 'the fever'. We could clearly see that they pursued it. While it was popular, there were critiques warning that the art world was focusing too much on minimalism.

Among various opinions about it, one was that colors in Korean art was being minimalized, although colors in art were very important. And others insisted that Korean art was getting too much notional, even though there were various manners of developing stories, shamanistic paintings, and folk paintings. When I compared them to what I studied, I thought it was influenced by Confucian culture.

When I discussed it with some philosophers after reading theorists' articles which supported those ideas, I found that philosophy is not always a background of arts. It was not that some theories were supporting the arts all the time. There can be various interpretations about the same notion, or same content. Since I knew many stories about people, I was aware that stories of people [check] who are facing reality are more like be able to be the center of art rather than be called as history, because they are various.

However, I don't know why but, like I said before, while I was working on the pine trees for arts contests, I might have had dreams of expressing problems in reality as art works. Historical topics were, like I said before ... I was touched by stories about traditional issues and many stories such as impressive literature, novels and movies.

I was always thinking that those impression can be made into art works as well. I thought I was capable to include it into my art works from time to time, but I was discouraged sometimes. It was really difficult to make them through training myself. For example, drawing while seeing the reality means...on one hand, reality is a flow of phenomena which is in front of us.

I doesn't work like, I can chose one of the phenomena and just paint it. I had to practice painting many phenomena in front of my eyes over and over until the skills were combined and I was able to express what I wanted. So, after graduating from college, whilst I was teaching students in a college as an instructor, I had to study for myself separately. Drawing the human body or face, which I had not done in college, was not the thing I could do at one go.

Drawing plaster figures was not greatly helpful for drawing a real human body. Since a human body is a moving figure and I had to harmonize his/her motions and stories with my notions, I had to spend a lot of time practicing it whilst teaching students in college for a long time, and I actually realized it by seeing my students' objective drawings. So I gathered with fellow artists and practiced drawing human models for 2 to 3 years over and over, and I think it was helpful for me to draw reality later.

Lee In Beom: I think, in the art world where the first world formalisms trend and the white monochrome, which was another deformation of minimalism, was overflowing, your reactions against them played very important roles for your art in your youth. I see you used to concentrate on the King Nosan story, which is a tragic and political history of Korea. And since 1999, you have been working on the works related to the Korean war, which is another tragic history of Korea. Could please tell us why you chose them as subjects of your art works? Did you have any special reasons?

Suh Yong Sun: First of all, the fight for power related to King Danjong(King Nosan) in the early period of the Josun Dynasty has been remembered as a tragic event in history, and I think tragedy is an important subject in arts, even though people don't think about death in their daily lives. We are bearing the tragedy called death as our fate. I think it is well forgotten in our daily lives, but can't be forgotten in arts, and art is a good manner to express it. I think it is the matter of that we know that we will face death some time but just don't think about it in our lives.

But I thought that the incident related to King Danjong could be a good model to show peoples' struggles and desire for power and fateful death all together. The idea was started when I visited the site where King Danjong was confined. But before that, I was comparing the Western arts and the Oriental one and thought there was something we had to learn from the Western arts.

I was trying to overcome the influence from the Western but, on the other hand, I was looking for something we must focus in Western arts. I thought history was where I could find the contradictions. Now I think it is history painting but there was no such a notion called history painting at that time. I just thought that it was an incident related to King Danjong, which showed a human's mean aspect that kills even his family member to have power. It was an incident that shows a human's ambition.

Second of all, my paintings related to the Korean war were created as I became to see the reality of Korea clearly while traveling in foreign countries. Even though my childhood experience was somehow deeply connected to the Korean War, I could not realize it early but, I could see it objectively later.

Especially, when I visited Germany in early 2000, I saw some traces of the division here and there in Berlin, and they made me realize that even though we are living in Seoul which is only 20 to 30 Kilometers away from the Military Demarcation Line, we often forget that it is very dangerous and serious reality for us. And also, the experience what the artists in the Eastern and the Western Germany had to get through during the division and the World War II reminded me of my childhood experience clearly, even though I did not experience the Korean War directly.

So, I started working on it, and after 15 years, I started to understand my childhood experience and my parents more clearly. I could understand my parents more, and furthermore, it seems that I became more generous about many parts of reality in Korea. Now I think discussing the communication problem amongst Koreans, without an understanding of the past, is meaningless.

I guess I have strayed from the point of the question, but, anyway, the idea of historical painting was derived from my direct and indirect experience. And even though I started historical painting from '86, I already tried it on big canvases in '82 and '83, with subjects like the Japanese invasions of Korea, which shows that Korea, as a peninsular country, struggled through a foreign country's invasion and survived.

However, at the beginning, I could not think independently, but just accepted the subject as it had been taught to us. I mean, if we think about when we were young, we were taught songs that praised Admiral Yi Shun-Shin, or military incidences or heroes in dictatorial government. And those were unnecessarily emphasized in history, and that led us not to think widely.

I myself was also not able to get out of the frame for the first 2 to 3 years. Later, I could think about the historical incidence of King Danjong and the Korean war objectively. Now I think that I somehow too recklessly tried to get rid of the influence from the Western art we have. I thought Korean art accepted the western style much too easily and in the process, we took the conventional aspect first and added meanings on it. I was skeptical about it because I thought the [check] convention is naturally formed.

Lee In Beom: I think the reason why the conventional aspect was widely accepted in the process of taking in Western art, was not irrelevant to the division of Korea and the Korea's political status during the time. What you have pursued in your art, or your attitude to face the reality, I mean your serious attitude toward the reality is pretty much opposed to the flow of the Korean contemporary art or the predominant view on it. What do you think about it?

Suh Yong Sun: Maybe, as you just said, I am some times skeptical about it. I am skeptical about the knowledge I have, and the general conventions in society as well. Broadly speaking, now I am called a painter or artist, but, to be honest, I am still not sure what it means. I don't know what I should be good at, even though I feel that I am an artist sometimes. For example, when I see peoples' reaction to my paintings, I think maybe that's the way of being an artist. But sometimes I am still wondering what 'doing art' means. I don't think I know about it well yet.

And when I think that what people tell me is not always true, I am very confused that if I live as an artist either because it is my job or because of my inner desire to do it from the bottom of heart. It is getting more and more confusing. I think Korean society has to keep seeing how we are merging with Western at a deeper level.

I mean... we should carefully see the Korean thing and the Western thing separately. But anyway, geographically, if we see the process of how we contact with European countries or the U.S carefully, we can find that art is finding a frame in the process. Since the cultures are developed on the geographical environment, how they meet each other decides the shapes art forms.

Some art forms we used to have were distorted in the process of meeting the Western through Japan. And also, from the fact that our university education system was built based on the U.S education system under the American military government, we should consider that political, social and economical aspects were reflected in arts as well. But we often think of them separately.

If we do not keep being skeptical, we can't see clearly what art is. Especially, artists including me are sensitive, and easily attracted by conventions. Even though those are important, on the other hand, since it is expressed by ourselves, if we do not care how we act and live, do not see how we learn the language of Western art and meet the people from there, or do not see the reality objectively, but just accept what people have made, it can create many misunderstandings. I think we are already experiencing that.

Lee In Beom: I think you are saying that we should face the cultural clash rather than just accepting the Western concept of art or systems.

Suh Yong Sun: Right, I mean many Korean and Asian artists or even the theorists who experienced the moment of facing the clash, did not have enough information about Western art, and they did not intend to understand it.

If we do not see carefully how they are melted into our arts and how they are formed as a convention, it will distract our thoughts. It will distract how we think. One of the most typical examples is art terminologies. There is so much baseless jargon in art and it affects us a lot. For example, blarh blarh-ism like minimalism, we might not be able to avoid it but if we are not skeptical about it, we can be locked in the frame and stay.

Lee In Beom: What I think about it, in some aspects, your art works are keeping distance from international art and the discussions about art. No matter if you intended it or not, your art works which took myth or landscape as subject are somehow distanced from First world's art and some times give an anachronic impression. Why don't you tell us about it? Why did you chose myth as a theme, and in the atmosphere that the convention of landscape painting is seen as an old fashioned one, why did you bring it up and spend your major time on it?

Suh Yong Sun: I think I changed my thought 10 year ago. I tried to travel overseas often and I was interested in contemporary arts. For example, I was curious about global flows of art with biennales at the center, and also interested in art forms following the new media environment. I was very curious about the free and new ways and tools of expression, and I was positive about them. But I started with focusing on what I could.

One of them is about the one called mainstream. I think I used to try to figure what the mainstream was. However, maybe it is too simple, but it is the same in our own country, in between the Western and the Eastern, and in the art world as well. If you work hard on your job, you become a part of a mainstream. I think that is what we call a mainstream.

When we are not a mainstream, we, including myself, try to find a mainstream. So I used to visit various exhibitions that I liked and other exhibitions which was not my type as well. However, on the other hand, when I am working on my art works, such as historical paintings, especially paintings of Korean history, some might say it is not the mainstream in current art world, but I think it is the mainstream in Korea.

Because Korea experienced many difficult situations in building its own history, because it was affected by the power of neighbor countries and it's a small country that had many diversions in its history, when it comes to the cultures, its accumulated knowledge was messed up too much to find the mainstream.

It was takenover by neighboring countries, distorted, and even our consciousness about our history was also distracted and became ambiguous. So, I think the job to bring it back should be the mainstream. [check] I don't mean to compare with Western history but it is just what I found it in the Western art. Especially in 50s, after 40s and 50s, I saw the flow of the western art carefully and many of other artists in Asia also saw it.

However, when I look at how the mainstreams of 70's changed, it seems that the people somehow lost their power. Furthermore, in the center of colorful American contemporary art, England and Germany's art flowed into in 80's and 90's, and it is shown in history and conventions. For example, um... famous British artists like Lucian Freud or many of German neo-expressionism artists, and new conceptual artists started to focus on their own issues in the late 60's.

For example, when East and West Germany united, the power was united together, and realism artists and communism advocate artists who were behind of the mainstream started to combine their works to the modern art and those who used to be thought of as conservative to bring their issues up to the center became the mainstream.

Now, when imperialism art is vague, there is no one who can draw Korean history except ourselves. Others are not interested in it. Then, is it limited to us? I don't think it is. If we do it well it can influence others. Other countries will think that we worked on it hard and made it, so they might think they must try it as well. I used to have passive attitude 10 years agao but I think my passive attitude toward being a mainstream has changed now.

Lee In Beom: Then, I think it is obvious that you have the attitude of facing the reality directly rather than following the conventions.

Suh Yong Sun: Right, as an artist, no matter whether it is a personal or historical issue between groups or countries, I express it anyway. When you see history, it is dependent on how people record it and interpret the meaning of it. In that aspect, art is the same as the history.

Lee In Beom: When so many people who have intention of reflecting reality and reviving the history through art works, call the genre historical painting, what do you think about the relations between historical fact and art which takes historical subjects?

I think there is a possibility that historical paintings can be considered to be subordinate to historical facts or historical literature, and can be understood just as a picture of a story. As an artist who has been engaged in interpreting historical events and focused on them, what do you think the most attractive aspect of being engaged in interpreting history is?

Suh Yong Sun: Basically, I don't think that history and reality are separated. One aspect of the thing called history is reality. But, this reality has a realistic meaning and seems to have it because the reality holds the history. When we address it as a reality not just a phenomenon, I feel the same way.

In a lot of magazines which introduce my paintings, it seems there are many parts that the genre called a historical painting is shown as interesting and unfamiliar one. Also, when explaining about artist's intention of a painting, it is delivered quickly depending on what language is selected. In that way, a historical painting is good term to deliver some messages to people quickly.

However, actually, the more important thing is the content. Depending on what history the painting wants to show and how the painting interpret history, it can be connected to the reality and finally the history has a meaning. In that way, I ... What I am mainly interested is my current life. My life and others' lives around me are in the center. And then, the history could be a guide to show the reality.

I am observing media such as journals or gallery audience talking about history and I think it is very interesting. Because I think when we think and talk about history we can reach to a current issues. So, my major paintings are related to various current issues and problems such as people in cities, self portraits, and historical paintings are secondary. However, the fact that I have that kind of tendency can be an interesting subject in this society and it will be well arranged, even though it doesn't explain me enough.

So I wouldn't say that being famous as an artist is wrong, but that when history and art can be combined is more important. It will be finally dependent on how my paintings will reflect the reality and convince people. History is a tool to explain the reality. Tragedy is not taken seriously these days, but fateful sorrow and tragedy are in our deeper mind. As an example, society today makes us forget tragedy and we are dazzled by consumption in this material society. I want to show the image of the people in today's society through my paintings.

Lee In Beom: It seems that we cannot ignore the fateful violence or the reality we face.

Suh Yong Sun: Of course.

Lee In Beom: Whether you draw people in cities, or historical events several hundreds years in the past, or the Korean War in the near past, from the point of a view that you draw people's pains and violence that made their life miserable, it can be understood like this. In terms of healing a group people's trauma, or revealing it, I think your art works are involved in it. Would you tell us about the subtle relations between your spirit of inquiry, the artistic world you intend to draw, and your artistic imagination, as you access to historical facts.

Suh Yong Sun: People including Koreans, accept the frame called a country naturally today. I don't think it's good or bad, but I think we should think about it more carefully. In our modern society, violence is artfully melted into stories. We are locked in ourselves, like we used to be. When we think about wars in the past, we are not that aware of them and think that wars were physical fights.

But nowadays, we believe that our government will protect us, and we think that wars are disappearing as countries are uniting together. In the frame of governments, we believe that the countries will restrain from violence and maintain peace, and that no more fighting will break out. However, if we see the overall reality in front of us, it is not that positive. It is uncertain, and actually we have been bearing a great risk since the North started to secure nuclear bombs.

But, we are living each day with the hope that the country might be able to politically solve the problem. In many other situation, we believe that we transferred our power to the government and we are retaining the frame of a country, so, there are many levels of power and we are living in the systematized frame. But I think we are too much settled for the system that we agreed with, and believe that we must keep the system, once we decided to.

So, how my ideas can be expressed in my painting is dependent only on my paintings. But, in two aspects, I think a convention is made from an artist's accumulated effort to express a subject through a theme. Even though I put a lot of effort in my work, when I see it later, I realize that I did not see it carefully and objectively. I don't think the word 'objective' is suitable for the situation but, I think human beings have two aspects. One thing is that we are humorous, and the other thing is that we are living each day with hiding tragic aspects.

I am not sure how the ideas were formed but if the aspects of human beings are well expressed through my brushwork, they will be combined with each other, and the subjects such as people in neighbor, environment-related tensions among people, violence among us, structural contradictions that we face, relations between power, and the problems occuring from our desire or development of science can be visually well presented in my paintings as a form of art.

Lee In Beom: Um... as an artist who is not working on abstract or conceptual art works, but facing the reality, you are painting pictures that reenacting historical events. Have you ever felt any conflict between reenacting historical incidents and creating artistic presentation, or between the facts and artistry?

Suh Yong Sun: Well, they are always closely related. When we talk about historical paintings, I neither mean that I know historical paintings a lot nor I know this genre well to do it. I think that I just focused on the tragic events from many angles, and it became the center of historical painting. Today, the genre called historical paintings, as we discussed before, the genre led by the government is shown in movies and others better.

And, there are also other historical paintings that deliver historical signs and echo, not the historical facts recorded, so I think paintings can be seen from the compromised point of view. If I pick some differences, I don't think there is an independent genre called historical painting, I would say there are paintings that show stories what people experienced, reality, and I would like to well connect the historical paintings and the paintings express the reality, but it will vary dependent on people's views.

Lee In Beom: I think we need a new language system to read your art works independently, and to see them as distinct from existing art genres.

Suh Yong Sun: I hope so, but no one knows.

Lee In Beom: Shall we wrap it up here?

Suh Yong Sun: Okay. Thank you.

Credits

Interviewer: Prof. Lee Ihnbum

Director of photography, audio and lighting: Fancois Saikally

Video editor: Francois Saikally

Transcription & translation: Stacey Kim

Director: Dr. Bob Jansen

Technical & assembly: Dr. Bob Jansen