She has been called a symbol of a new globalised generation. In Korea, SEO is regarded as an almost official representative of the country and as one of the world-class artists Korea has given birth to. SEO was born Soo-Kyoung Seo in the South Korean city of Gwangju, 330 km to the south of the capital Seoul, in 1977. Enraptured, some of her countrymen see her as a Cinderella in Berlin". This praise is not least due to the renowned art collections that have works by the 32-year-old artist in their possession and have brought her much initial renown, including New York's Judith Rothschild Foundation and the Museum of Modern Art. SEO has had a fairytale career. She moved to Berlin in 2001 to study with Georg Baselitz, where, through her art as well as worldly, non-artistic adventures, she investigated the rites of everyday German life on the lookout for the peculiar and surprising. SEO now proclaims self-confidently, I am a German artist". SEO unites Asian and European elements in her pieces. She makes use of an exceptional artistic process to create her works: Thousands of paper strips are affixed to the canvas - collage-like - painted, pasted over and then painted again to compose fascinating pictures with an extraordinary structure and depth that "illustrate the essence of things and not the immediately apparent". AUTHOR: Christoph Tannert is an art historian, curator and critic who lives in Berlin and has been manager of the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin since 2000. ILLUSTRATIONS 128 illustrations
