Byun Kyung-Sup

Korean Contemporary Art by Kyung-Sup Byun - Drawing for Sewing, for Gwangju

2021

Byun Kyung-Sup is a Korean artist born in 1957 who lives and works in Gwangju, Korea. She studied painting at the College of Fine Arts, Hongik University in Seoul where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1980; shortly after she moved to Arlington, Texas with her husband where she dedicated her time to rearing her children. Although from a wealthy family, she never considered their help a fallback and chose to build her life independently. During this period, she took up a job as a seamstress, which was one of many occupational identities she embodied to support her family. This is when she discovered the beauty and pain of an honest, albeit painstaking, labor. It wasn’t until 20 years later that she returned to Korea to study Fine Arts in the Graduate School of Chonnam University in Gwangju, Korea and held her paintbrush again. Ever since, her day-to-day work has been focused on painting infinite dots, which reflects her experience as a seamstress and her love of stitches. She now resides in Gwangju, Korea with her husband, a retired professor. She translates the concept of sewing into her work. Each tiny dot in her paintings resembles a stitch that requires a precise, purposeful brushstroke. Just like you can’t simply glue one garment to another, and each piece of clothing a result of a meaningful compilation of stitches, her work seeks to connect the seemingly insignificant dots to create a dimension for self-reflection and to remind myself that what may seem like a small dot can be part of a much larger, beautiful picture.