artworkkorea: Hong, Ji Yoon : Stroll around the woods of life and love

2008 Bohemian - Roaming soul 210x150cm c-print Mounted on Plexiglas

Stroll around the woods of life and love

Written by Gim Choe, Eun yeong(Zahamuseum chief curator)

# Hong’s drawing is a poem.

Various colors of flowers bloom on her brushes. Birds in peace move freely among flowers along with her brushes. Those paintings seem to be enough on the drawing paper which normally take the void space for granted in the way of oriental drawing, but, in her drawings, there runs the full scripts of types in that with no void space. Those words come from her plain diary and poem.

To her, there is none of orders in diaries, poems and drawings. It's because diaries which describe her daily life become poems, then poems become drawings, and vice versa. As if she's adapted to those virtues of love and life written on above, her labor-like efforts to fill up blank space one by one between letters and images with Chinese ink seem to be somewhat a kind of enjoyment.

# Hong’s drawing is a song.

Flowers, birds, poems, water drops and even nameless dots appear to dance on her drawing. Emphasized in Oriental paintings, it is because her lively spirits pass into paintbrushes and eventually on her paintings. So to speak, the high-spirited liveliness is to be read as rhythms which need not to distinguish between listening to music and seeing the drawings.

Trying to communicate through the touch of brushes, Hong’s paintings are a happy, hearty minuet rather than a lonely, sad adagio. However it is not meant to be shallow sentimental tricks to stir her viewers. From the fact that she can tell a story of others not herself and sing a spirit of 21st century Literary Art, we could see at her warm smile that a person can get by going through harsh hours.

2008 Bohemian in the Rainbow 2 c-print Mounted on Plexiglas

# Hong’s drawing is herself.

She shows both love for others and heart for drawing with poems and songs. Therefore, her poems and songs are very self-confessed. This is why she cannot cease drawing which contains all of her characteristics.

Thistime, ceaseless painter starts to show us her works in another way. After writing types and drawing images, she weaves those two things and work out some new media arts. It has gained some new stories about hers and compositions of screens differentiated a little than before. Whatever the media be, those things finally can be resulted in own narratives of hers.

# She strolls around the woods of life and love

She chooses Chinese ink and Chinese drawing paper, not the just way of following the tradition, but the way of communicating herself most properly. So, some people may think of her works somewhat a Contemporary Literary Painting. Also, the other may say she's doing the Fusion-styled Oriental Painting in that she develops her work methods through the media tools and light boxes after drawing with Chinese ink. However, I would not like to conclude in such a narrow-viewed way.

Because I want Hong, composing poems and singing throughout drawing, to be a more artist rather than literary man in this generation, and to perform broadly and widely in Post Oriental Painting rather than Fusion-styled Oriental Paintings. Besides, that is similarto the story of SoYoYoo (it means strolling around freely) from parable of Tseng-tzu. The enjoyment in Tseng-tzu pursues, beyond the simple meaning, the liberalization of mentality throughout a kind of metamorphosis. These enjoyments are self-spontaneous and full of joys. This is why I've used the terms of 'play one game' about her works.

Therefore, maybe, I've got some thoughts that she already strolls around the woods of the life and the love beyond the severity of life.