Sun Young Min

The Korean artist Sun Young Min has focused her expansive creative practice on images of flora intuitively rendered in acrylic on canvas. “Everything is expressed through flowers,” she says, as she mobilizes the traditional Western genre of Nature Morte to address questions of youth, mortality and the passage of time. Her creative process starts with an intense period of writing. “My sketches are my writing,” she explains, preparing her to complete each cycle of unique works with passion and speed. The irises that populated Sun Young Min’s Art embody the artist’s unique position between Europe and Asia. The flower many see as the inspiration for France’s heraldic symbol of the fleur-de-lis, for Sun Young Min, also reveals her Oriental side. But Sun Young Min’s irises are not only sceptres of place and identity; in her work they have become autonomous creatures, charged with an evolving range of emotions and energies. Lately, Sun Young Min sees her irises becoming less Eastern and more European. The most exciting part of her work is the visible struggle between extremes. On her canvases East meets West with the same overwhelming intensity that the inevitability of death faces the vibrancy of life. – Lillian Davies

Lillian Davies is an art historian and critic specializing in modern and contemporary art. She is a professor of Fine Arts at Paris College of Art and a regular contributor to Artforum magazine, among other international publications.

French May