Byunghee Sung has consistently created on the canvas the images of humans with anxiety-stricken eyes, laden with external constraint of silence or self-produced, corroding emptiness. They could be regarded as either specific individuals with their own history of pain, or universal human existence suffering and collapsing from the repetitious, cumbersome routine of life bringing about external and internal barrenness and vacancy.

 

The gestures of her hands, reminiscent of a sign language, are inseparably entangled with the expression on the faces.

The stark contrast between the pale, nearly albinistic faces whose age is inestimable and the reddish hue of the eye rims and fingertips suggests with subtlety the darkness deep within both the person portrayed and human beings in general. The exquisite balance between the intense and strong contrast of color, and the refrained composition in canvas provides paradoxically abundant implications in which the artist seems to not only inform the viewers of her own individual story of suffering, but invite them to experience what she feels and reflect on the universal condition of human existence including our own.