Korean Ceramic Art: Kim Hyo Sun 김효선

Our meeting with Kim Hyo Sun was very brief but even in that short time we were able to gain an impression of an outgoing and vital artist with an interesting vision. Her work is centered on the human figure but it is a view of the human figure that is not a conventional view. Her two dimensional drawings of the nude body show great ease and fluidity in expression but she has taken a much more exaggerated view of the human body in a series of three dimensional sculptures in clay. These small scale sculptures are an exploration of the sensual qualities of female fat folds. Not at all voyeuristic or repellant these sculptures pose the figures in active and sometimes gravity defying postures giving a feeling of celebration to the pink flesh. The same delight in the ability of clay to wiggle and wobble is seen in her earlier body of work which concerned containers for human excrement. These containers were a staple of storage jar makers in traditional society but the skewed versions which Kim Hyo Sun throws are anything but traditional. If we examine the metaphor these lively containers are also figure studies.

The third and perhaps darkest set of figure studies is the Thanatos series. These starkly white sets of bones and chairs and bandages make up a meditation on the inevitability of death and the possibility of reincarnation. The disarticulated bones represent both the state of life and death with the chair as a temporal marker of the point of death. The swaddling bandages refer to the Korean practice of dressing corpses in white bandages for interment. Because disinterred bodies are occasionally found to be perfect skeletons dressed in full sets of clothing with the flesh completely gone, the bandaged bones can also be interpreted as questioning whether there might be an afterlife.

Kim Hyo Sun received both her BFA and MFA from Seoul University of Technology before going to the University of Wales in Cardiff to get a second MFA. Currently teaching and working as an independent artist in Korea she is looking forward to extending her sculptural explorations into new fields.

EDUATION

2004 M.A. in Ceramics, University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, UK

2000 M.A. in Ceramics, Seoul National University of Technology, Seoul, SK

1998 B.A. in Ceramics, Seoul Natioanl University of Technology, Seoul, SK

1993 Diploma in Ceramics, Han Yang Women’s College, Seoul, SK

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

2006-Present Instructor, Kongju National University, Kongju, SK

2000-02 Instructor, JinGun Middle School, Gyeonggi-do, SK

2000-01 Insturctor, Yensei University, Seoul, SK

CONTACT INFORMATION

Tel: +82(country code).(0)31.511.8759 C.P: +82.(0)10.3299.8759

E-mail: ehu70thanatos@hotmail.com, thanatos70@hanmail.net