"The animal-based symbolism of Korean folklore" - Sun Hee Yang: An Artisan of the Dancheong and Minhwa Genres

Five-Colored Phoenix (2025)

By EKIN ERKAN  March 17, 2025

         Sun Hee Yang is exacting in her engagement with the Dancheong genre, a traditional Korean decorative style that makes use of variegated colors. The Dancheong style, rife with colorful floral crest patterns, is best known for adorning wooden building and structures, including royal palaces and temples. Dancheong rose in popularity in Korea, China, and Japan in tandem with Buddhism and Confucianism’s burgeoning adoption. Korean Dancheong in particular has qualities that are idiosyncratic to it, compared to its Chinese and Japanese counterparts. It purposefully uses bolder lines and brighter color schemes, such that these lasting palettes might vibrantly dart the eaves of temple roofs, such as the Naesosa Temple. Korean Dancheong also frequently supplements floral designs with patterns of dragons, lions, and cranes amidst lotus flowers and vines.

Dragon and Phoenix on Ashwood (2025)

         In her colorism and motifs, Yang draws from and demonstrates her dexterity in this traditional genre. To properly appreciate Yang’s work, one must also espy the Minhwa (“folk painting”) genre, which Yang also utilizes. Minhwa, which transpired and reached its nadir during the Chosun Era (1392-1910), remains an integral part of Korea’s visual cultural heritage, its symbolism conveying the mythology and theology of Buddhism, shamanism, Confucianism, and Taoism. Minhwa symbols, tout court, were believed to grant good fortune and protect people from evil spirits; works executed in this mode frequently depict scenes of everyday life and nature. Insofar as its symbolism is concerned, the peony (Morado) is the most recurrent leitmotif, charting traditional Minhwa works and Yang’s canvases, irradiating with peach-pink and maroon petals and trimmings. Although decorative, there is also a symbolism at play: the peony blossom is a symbol of wealth and honor. Flowers and birds (Hwajodo), which also reoccur through Yang’s works, symbolize a fortuitous marriage and desire for a life brimming with riches, good fortune, and honor.

The Lion that Brings Wealth and Glory (2025)

         Throughout Yang’s series, she brilliantly purposes the animal-based symbolism of Korean folklore—specifically, the twelve animals of the Korean Zodiac. These include the Dragon, the sole imaginary creature of the twelve Zodiac animals, which symbolizes protection and guardianship, as a symbol of national defense. Other choice motifs are birds and chickens, which, as inter-realm messengers, freely trek mountains, the land, and the sky, carrying earthly souls to the heavenly world. In addition to Dancheong and Minhwa, Yang also appropriates the traditional dalhangari, or moon jar, a light green porcelain vessel popularized during the late Joseon period (1392– 1897). The “moon jar” is so denominated due of its form, traditionally rendered by adjoining two hemispherical halves. Yang’s Moon Jar paintings are extraordinary. In Yang’s Moon Jar #1, a human figure with stringed tufts of wound black hair tides strings of peonies and flowers, wafting in their variegated midst. In Moon Jar #2, the same figure levitates between the flora and fauna, strumming an instrument while golden pocks buoy her arched body. One is awe-struck by Yang’s nimble colorism, at once kaleidoscopic and comparable to the Fauves’ glowing palettes.

Moon Jar #1 (2025)

Moon Jar #2 (2025)

         As Yang draws from the motifs and leitmotifs of Buddhist art history, she appropriately hews towards signifiers of radiant wisdom, royalty, respect, and integrity—e.g., the peacock, which is frequently adorned on peonies and occasions Yang’s masterful bounds and rivulets of tawny gold, crimson-rose, and deep lapis lazuli blue. The peacock was regarded as symbolizing the King and royalty more generally, lionized during the Goryeo dynasty (918 - 1392) and the early/mid-Josean Dynasty. Yang renders these traditional symbols contemporary with her positing the human figure, breaking the motley green and blue tidings of leaves that wrap and wade into one another other, fracturing flaxen and cerulean-beryl blossoms that burst from the background. In Hide and Seek #4, Yang’s recurrent Buddhist monk gingerly serves the wildlife, softly holding a brilliantly colored chicken (a symbol of endurance). Yang here expresses a sense of symbiosis between reverent man and nature.

The Appearance of Sumeru platform 3 (2025)

         The aforementioned motifs riddle A bouquet of happy flowers #1, A bouquet of happy flowers #2, Five-colored azure dragon and myriad other works. One can not help but, first and foremost, being startled by Yang’s command of color—particularly pronounced in her carmine-striped, cobalt-scaled whiskered dragons. The triad of burnt orange, moss-green, and azure lilies dot the background upon which the dragon splays his body, snaring his winding neck. The dragon series is nothing short of dexterous, demonstrative of generations of Buddhist artistanship passed down within a self-revising, self-perfecting process. Yang is heir to this long, winding history and does it great justice while not isolating her ambit from more Modern influences—chiefly, in her color and use of human figures. But a proper Modernist, she is not. Instead, Yang is a romantic who remains true to a punctilious genealogy of artisanship.

Mount Sumeru (2025)

         Five-Colored Azure Dragon (2025)

        A Bouquet of Happy Flowers #2, with its sanguine and felicitous title, is demonstrative of Yang’s ability to wrest novel images from traditional ones without abandoning (or quite modernizing it). A bald monk, swathed in a royal flaxen robe, balances a crown of vermillion and powder-pink peonies. Their collective palette cascades into the surrounding whirligig-rolling lull of landscape elements, the background swarming with hills, mounds, and threading serpentine trails. Towards the lower right of the canvas is a somewhat clandestine gold-faced watch whose visage frames a sword-ridden verdant mountainous domain. The work is radiant as is much of Yang’s oeuvre, on display in this show. Yang’s exacting, perspicacious work is sensuous and it is rare that one is privy to such a maestra, able to skillfully dovetail colorism and traditional symbolism without compromising either. There are a number of Korean artists who have, over the last few decades, sought to modernize Dancheong and Minhwa, including Lee Young-hee, Yang Sang-hoon, Jo Hye-young. Yang’s approach is closer to Kim Seok-gon, another traditionalist who shirks absolutely insular provinciality; both lightly regard—and only regard—Western modern art history, privileging the decorous and symbolist fortitude of their folk traditions. While some might regard this a self-contained and self-assured conceit, I find it illuminating to view such exhibitions like the one on display at Kate Oh, as their service a didactic, disciplined tradition frequently overshadowed by more epochal concerns. Yang is, in turn, something of a Romantic and artisan, keeping the Minhwa and Dancheong practices aflame. WM

Exhibition on view at Kate Oh Gallery (31 E 72nd St, New York, NY 10021) from March 3 - March 18, 2025.