Sei Ryun Chun

Sei Ryun Chun (b. 1956, Busan, South Korea) is a Korean-American visual artist and traditional tea-ceremony (darye) master based in the New York metro area. Working across painting, printmaking, sculpture, installation, and performance, she founded the Korean Tea Lovers Society and Oms Art Gallery in New Jersey. At Ontopo's Catskill Zendo gatherings she led the closing tea ceremony (2019) and the gate-temple tea and tour (2022 Bak Lim Sa).

Approach. Chun treats tea as art and art as meditation, working from the Korean concepts of darye (tea etiquette) and pungnyu (an aesthetic of nature, life, and art); her visual work uses tea-dyed paper, leather, sand, and thread, grounded in Korean philosophy and the “round sky, square earth” motif.

Selected. Solo exhibitions in New York, Washington D.C., Berlin, and Daegu; a 2023 Scripps News feature; her essay collection New York to Seoul (2019).

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