Sunkoo Yuh was born in 1960 in South Korea, immigrated to the U.S. in 1988 and now resides in Athens, GA, where he is a professor of art at the University of Georgia. He received his BFA degree from Hong Ik University, Seoul, Korea and his MFA degree from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred, NY.
Yuh’s ceramic sculpture compose of tight groupings of various forms including plants, animals, fish, and human figures. While Korean art and Buddhist, Christian and Confucian beliefs inform some aspects of his imagery, his work is largely driven by implied narratives that often suggest socio-political critiques. Yuh’s current focus on type of architectural-scale sculpture and on pushing his medium to its limits of size.
He has exhibited widely and has received many awards and honors. He was the recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation grant, the Grand Prize at the 2nd World Ceramic Biennale International Competition, Icheon, Korea, The Elizabeth R. Raphael Founder’s Prize and the Virginia A. Groot Foundation. His work is in the collections of The Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., The Museum of Fine Arts, The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, Houston, Houston, TX, Icheon World Ceramic Center, Icheon, Korea, the International Museum of Ceramic Art, Alfred, NY, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, the Oakland Museum of Art, California and more.
I often make my works from intuitively and spontaneously drawn images. These two-dimensional images contain conscious and unconscious concerns in my life. It also reflects my relationships and memories with people around me and life experiences. I closely study my drawings and select a few to transform into three-dimensional clay sculptures or pottery forms. As a result, the body of my work as an artist is to transform the images from my mind into tangible sculptures and pots.