Veronica Juyoun Byun was born in Seoul, Korea and educated in the US She received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and her BFA from Alfred University, New York. Byun currently lives and works in New Jersey. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally in galleries and public institutions in Korea, Croatia, Austria, Taiwan, Italy and widely in the USA. She is represented by Loveed Fine Arts in New York City since 2008.
Her statement:
“I want my work to be a gateway, to touch the viewer more viscerally. What is felt then is both concrete and atmospheric. For myself, working in clay allows me the opportunity to offer “tactile pictures” and a range of impressions that I have gathered over time. These include memories and questioning my own Korean identity. While these impressions are unique to my experience, I believe they also cross the lines of shared human experience. Things that I have seen, heard, touched, and tasted turn into subject matter for my work. Everything that I experience in life has a potential for providing a basis from which my work can be born.
The colors and customs of Korea are a source of inspiration for my work. They are an integral part of my personality as well as a source for developing a palate from which to elicit emotion. Rainbow or primary color schemes symbolize protection, especially from sources of evil. While Buddhist traditions are full of symbolism relative to finding an enduring paradise on earth, my goal is to discover new imagery that suggests these traditions, yet in a personal and signifying framework, using clay as the medium for expression.
Motion and movement are important aspects in my work as it relates to the sinuous thrust of expansive space which I view as a metaphor for the human condition, and like the world is more than the sum of its parts. In this respect my ceramic installations are membranes or skins, through which a viewer can experience as a kind of portal, or means of access. The installations I create are dimensional reliefs that serve to enclose and protect. My work is always defined by interior space, where the wall is a passage, path and gap. The walls that I occupy are continuous; they activate imaginary passage between two cultures.
