Korean Ceramic Art: Park Sun Woo 박선우

“If you choose ceramics you will be hungry all of your life”. Park Sun Woo is quoting his father’s thinking at the time that the younger Park was setting forth on the career that has carried him to the position of Dean of the Design Department at Seoul National University of Technology. He has come a long way from the small town of Muan in the remote southwestern part of Korea where he was born to a family which had an illustrious painter as an ancestor. Pushed by his parents to follow his siblings into the medical field he turned to art and design because he didn’t gain entrance to medical school. First gathering his BFA from Seoul National University of Technology, he moved on to Kookmin University for his MFA and then to Dankook University for his Ph.D. in an attempt to gather a much broader exposure to different teaching styles than is usual among Korean students.

Although Park Sun Woo worked for a time at a large integrated design firm which handled advertising, interior design, and exhibition display his real calling was in teaching and he became a professor at Seoul National University of Technology at 33. The very large size of the ceramic department (over 200 majors) and the excellent facilities gave him a chance to demonstrate the concern for ceramic education which is a consuming passion. Worried over the survival of ceramic programs at a time when the number of students who choose ceramics is dropping he has sought to incorporate computer aided design courses and other innovations into the curriculum.

A taste for innovation has also marked his own work which he pursues on weekends and vacation time. Creating his pieces by various indirect methods such as casting, Park Sun Woo is less interested in the touch of the potters hand than in having clay faithfully represent his ideas. The sculptural forms often serve as a vehicle for his surface designs and the whole body of his work conveys an impression of consistent vision realized using the latest ceramic technologies as the most efficient means to his ends.

EDUCATION

Ph.D., Dankook University, Yongin, SK

M.F.A., Kookmin University, Gyeongju, SK

B.F.A., Seoul National University of Technology, Seoul, SK

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2007 Inter Form by Inscriptions on Bones and Tortoise Carapaces, Korea Craft Council Center, SK

2006 Park Sun Woo Found Objects, SK

2006 Asia Art Center, U.S.A.

2004 Culture Goods by Park Sun Woo, Beijing Millennium Art Gallery, Beijing , China

2003 Art Ceramics by Park Sun Woo, Seoul Art Center, Seoul, SK

2003 Tea Pots by Park Sun Woo, Cosmos Gallery, Incheon, SK

2003 Park Sun Woo Found Objects, Kepco Plaza Gallery, Seoul, SK