Painting is, for Jungyul Yu, a visualized record of personal times and spaces representing scenes among many still shots that are scattered in her conscious and subconscious realms. Sometimes, these visual journals portray simple landscapes and landscape-like images in different seasons. Sometimes, they represent abstract images, including the status of her mind in moments that she encounter in dreams and daydreams and while experiencing happiness and unfulfilled desire.
She admires Mark Rothko’s simple compositions and the sublime feeling evoked by the aura of his work and Wolfe Kahn’s landscape paintings with brilliant colors. Her greatest inspirations are her own exposure to colors in nature and the emotions she experiences during daily life and while traveling.
She often simplify or stylize subject matters, representational or abstract. On her pictorial surface, occasionally used objects such as human hair, dried flower petals and textured paper provide a sense of permanence through fossilization. Some writings and dates are composed with the visual elements. Korean (her native language) and English (her adopted language) are occasionally presented in simple forms: few words, short sentences, or fragments of sentences. Dates appearing on the paintings mark birthdays and commemorative days throughout her past and present.
Jungyul Yu (b. Busan, South Korea) paints primarily with oil and has gradually added various mixed media to her painting surface. Among the most common media she uses are her own photographs as well as found objects such as yarn, tree bark, flower petals, and hair.
She has participated in several group shows in the United States and has had solo exhibitions in Busan, South Korea and Tallahassee, Florida. She received an Individual Artists Program grant sponsored by the City of Chicago and the grand prize at the Modern Wing Photo Contest sponsored by The Art Institute of Chicago and NBC5. She is currently painting with oil and mixed media and photographing with Nikon manual and DSLR cameras, continuing her passion for photography that she developed while at Kenyon College.
She holds a B.A. in Studio Art from Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio and an M.F.A. in Studio Art from Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida. She has worked as a translator of Korean poetry and art criticism from Korean into English. She co-translated a book entitled Three Poets of Modern Korea (Sarabande Books) and translated 2002 International Flag Art Festival, a catalogue of the Flag Art Festival held in conjunction with the 2002 FIFA World Cup.
Kansas City, USA
studio.j.yu@gmail.com
jungyul@jungyulyu.com