Sueim Koo is an artist based in Nanuet, New York. She earned her BFA at SUNY Purchase College and studied at The Art Students League of New York. She has enjoyed five solo exhibitions and was selected and invited to many group exhibitions and art fairs, such as Art’s Guild NJ’s International Juried Exhibition in New Jersey, the Monmouth Museum, the Library of Weill Cornell Medical Center, Bridge to Korea at IHOUSEPHILLY in Philadelphia, the Edward Hopper Art Center, and many more. Her works were awarded the Da Vinchi Art Alliance, Ring Gallery, and the Our Common Grounds Artist Guild Gallery.
Sueim Koo uses collage and oil painting to create abstract landscapes based on phrases in her essay book. Often, the sentences directly from her journal become the titles of the works. Although her work depicts landscapes, those landscapes lie beyond the geographic imagery itself. Instead, each canvas holds in it a story, fraught with the emotional depths of her life. The story of her images with chromatic color schemes are shreds of evidence of psychological conflict and metaphors of suppression in her personal life.
By her lustrous abstract paintings with collages, she reveals spiritual and lyrical emotions. Koo orchestrates the colors as if they are soft and romantic musical pitches. Some reflect her deep spirit with enthusiasm, while others depict a broken heart with grief, and the excitement of longing. Therefore, Koo’s images echo a hope to overcome the conflicts of her daily life through her own visual ways.
In this exhibition, she expresses her gratitude towards close friends of more than decades including her family members. Transforming her personal feelings for each individual into abstract colors and shapes as a background landscape of her painting, she embedded her feelings as if it's a spiritual gift to her friends and families.
"Friendship is more than just spending time together
Friends listen without prejudice
Turn each other's weaknesses into each other's values
Encourage each other, share the passion and soul together
Time and distance have nothing to do with friendship
The friendship is a virtue, and will always be there
People who have been together for more than a decade
They will be together in my spiritual landscapes"
- Sueim Koo, January 2020
For more information, please visit www.sueimkoo.com.