Hong, Sun hoan

Hong Sun-hoan's World of Fine Art: Exhibition=Reading of Crevice

written by Kim Seung-ho/ Doctor of Philosophy

Hong Sun-hoan had a solo exhibition at KunstDoc, a non-profit space near Kyoungbok Palace. Having an exhibition as director of KunstDoc is apparently different from having an exhibition as an artist. Although it is on the line extended from his Daegu exhibition, this Seoul exhibition is quite different from the latter one in terms of scale and contents. The artist expands his art activities from Daegu through Seoul to Europe. Despite he can hardly afford to continue his own activities of arts because they are irrelevant to commercialism, his world of fine art continues to expand its meaning.
Gallery KunstDoc located at Changseong-dong, Jongro-gu, Seoul was filled with Hong Soon-hwan's art works attracting the audience. The floor of the exhibition hall was filled of the tiles in order, while one of the walls was featured by a flag swaying lightly. The picture frames on the other walls showed the photos of the foreign scenes we could see during our overseas travels. On the second floor exhibition hall, water drops on a mat faced the wall, while video images were turning in a corner. Artist Hong's solo exhibition connotes a world of gravity crossing the boundaries of painting, photography, installation, drawing and video. However, we should not simply assume that such features of the visual fine art connoting a world of gravity as diversity of media, crossing among genres, and the like may be all about artist's competence. The art works installed at KunstDoc are both light and heavy, both placed and hung, both fixed and free, both cold and warm, both geometric and soft. In short, they are playing between crevices. Both emotional and reasonable discords are bound into materials and structures, and further, into the exhibition and created spaces in an organistic way. As it is, the exhibition requires reading of crevices.
Hong Sun-hoan's works are read differently depending on the exhibition themes. The story about the works we capture at the exhibition and that about his main concern or the structure of gravity are interesting. Here, the doubt how much artist's view of the world can be understand is receding behind, because his exhibition makes tour to Daegu, Seoul and Dusseldorf (including the solo exhibition in 2011) in both terms of his art works and ordinary activities. What are the advantages of the free movement between regions for the artist? What attitudes do domestic and foreign exhibitions require of him? Despite the sufficient public awareness of him and despite the difficult domestic conditions for criticism of his art works, we should not simply dismiss the reading of crevices required of the audience.
It is not easy to read his exhibition and its crevices. For his world of arts crosses the boundaries of all genres of our contemporary fine art, while he releases or binds the connections among painting, drawing, installation, media and objects. As a result, the net of relationships among them is both specialized and individualized, and in this course, the aesthetic challenge 'seeing' arises. The contemporary fine art invites the artist to explore the net of relationships among genres, entering into the net. Here, he raises the doubt whether 'seeing' is true and real. Hong Sun-hoan engaged in the visual world finds his identity as artist in the contemporary fine art, but the behavior of 'seeing' targets the exhibition proper. As it is, he hints that the exhibition requires the challenge of seeing truth and reality. It is neither a relay from past to future nor a connection between here and there.
Hong Sun-hoan unfolded this exhibition with difficult but useful story about crevices. Reading of crevices gets deep with such elements as simple and rough painting elements, light and feeble ordinary elements, strong and cynical sculptural elements, hard and cold furniture elements, grand and historic architecture elements, formal and mechanic factual elements, formless and artificial physical elements, natural and rhymic spatial elements, etc. However, the functionality of materials is deprived due to the internal structure combed by objects. Painting is roughly associated with the minor everyday life, sculpture requires a cynical dialogue with the hard furniture, architecture faces the real world mechanically, and so on. Thus, our human body in the space of arts becomes flexible, being responsive to the flexibility, and in this process, the crevices get a sense of vitality. For Hong Sun-hoan has deprived the materials of their functionality and instead, has added up an aesthetic challenge, gravity. Painting, sculpture, architecture, video and installation have started with 'seeing' ultimately, but 'seeing' is assumed on 'invisible.' Aren't all these schemes based on artist's belief that things cannot be visible but perceivable? The aesthetics of gravity is invisible but perceived. The gravity acts only when there exist painting, sculpture, architecture, video and installation. We as observers judge how the gravity can be perceived from cloth, iron, paper and tree, how the spatial gravity should be understood from tile, flag and mat, and how the gravity is structured on plane, cube and video. However, the aesthetic value of gravity is a gift from the history of fine art. Hong Sun-hoan confirms and perceives the aesthetic gravity by seeing it, and thereby, requests us to be aware of the value of crevices.
Hong Sun-hoan active in Korea and Europe deepens the meaning of the aesthetic gravity by making use of a community among genres, the invisible world where things are deployed and arranged. Therefore, you may feel difficult to understand his exhibits, being urged to review them beyond the conventional criticism. What is clear is the fact that this Seoul exhibition at KunstDoc has given us an opportunity to read the crevices, while solidifying the reading of crevices. Although Hong Sun-hoan as artist and the artist as speaker for crevices are like both sides of the coin, we need to admit that it is a difficult and hard journey in the history of fine art to visualize the invisible world.

HONG SUN-HOAN


EDUCATION
1991 Bachelor's Degree in Painting, Chung-AngUniversity
1997 M.F.A Graduated from Kunstakademie Duesseldorf
(1997 Meisterschueler  2000 Akademiebrief 
bei Prof. Beate Schiff, Prof. Siegfrid Anzinger)

E X H I B I T I O N S (solo-selected)
2010 Gallery Jean+Jean Art Center, Seoul. Korea
2008 Gallery Kunstdoc, Seoul Korea
2007 Gallery Laden 44, Duesseldorf. Germany
2004 Gallery Dukwon, Seoul. Korea
2003 Gallery artsWILL, Seoul. Korea
2003 Stellwerk im Kulturbahnhof, Kassel. Germany
2002 Marronnier Art Center, The Korean Culture & Arts Foundation, Seoul. Korea
2000 Gallery Kwanhoon , Seoul. Korea
1998 Gallery Bloemkes & Poette, Wuppertal. Germany
1998 Gallery Kleinerathaus, Odental. Germany
1998 Seoul Art Center, Seoul. Korea
1996 Gallery ,Kleinerathaus, Odental. Germany


122-9 Changsung-Dong, Jongro-Gu, Seoul 110-034, Korea
c.p. +82 10 2707 7121
e.mail. hong1598@lycos.co.kr

Kim Kyung-rae

Kim Kyung-rae's Painting
A Deep and Profound Landscape seen with Inward Eyes
                          

  Kho, Chung-Hwan/ art critic

There is a painting visible with our eyes closed. Usually, it is an afterimage of the scene we saw before we close our eyes, but shortly soon after, it would be followed endlessly by some unknown paintings we can neither know about their substance nor guess their depth. In other words, they seem to be some profound paintings that are deep and shallow alternately rather than continuous like a panorama. They look like the dim flames floating still in the dark or the firecrackers exploded nearby or from afar, or the fires spat by an exploded volcano, or the mountain chain piled up, or the craters of the moon or such planes as the Mars, or sometimes a pretty specific and fantastic scene such as the deep sea gushing up the tiny water drops together with the blurred rays of light flowing in between colorful seaweeds and sea lifes. The painting can only be described by means of the subjunctive mood 'as if it were,' and therefore, it can hardly be captured as some fixed form. Sometimes, it reminds us of a remote street like an air map, and at other times, it is reminiscent of some indeterminate, suggestive form that varies every hour or minute. Hence, the painting will disappear before our eyes unwittingly if we are lost in any miscellaneous thought. Therefore, we should concentrate on the painting if we don't want to miss it. Or, we should follow it still with even our nerve off, unconsciously letting it flow or vary.
What is the substance of this painting that is usually abstract and often specific? As mentioned above, it is an afterimage of what we have seen, namely an afterimage of a substance (corresponding to the lingering imagery in the sound). However, what is the continuing painting following the short afterimage endlessly? The painting is what each 'I' made. So, it is correct to say that it went over from 'me.' It was evoked by my mind, my desire and my thought. Merely, what was evoked has been clad with forms and colors.
As it is, Kim Kyung-rae draws the profound and internal landscape. He draws the images described by mind, desire and thought. However, the images have neither fixed forms nor determinate colors, indeed. So, his painting is a fixed form actually, but it looks like moving endlessly, being clad with some determinate colors. In fact, it seems to accommodate the spectrum of various heterogeneous colors. The feeling that it seems to move and harbor different colors will be vivid when it is seen nearby rather than from afar and at the same time when it is seen with eyes of thought or mind, namely deep eyes. I mean it will be seen if you see it with a sympathizing or open mind. The artist's painting visible with your eyes closed means that he draws the pictures he saw with his deep eyes. Seeing the painting with your eyes closed or the painting visible with your eyes closed means you see it with your deep eyes, doesn't it? However, how can the artist capture the image with no fixed form or determinate color and flowing and varying continuously and thereby, paint it? Here, the image visible with your eyes closed can only play a role of minimum clue. In the process of capturing the image and painting it, other occasions conscious or unconscious intervene, and thus, the image varies and changes. For example, a formative occasion (namely, a learned formal logic) may intervene, or a representative occasion (namely, an occasion reminiscent of some landscape) may intervene.
Summing up, the artist's painting is about a scene he saw with his profound eyes, and at the same time, an internal landscape projected by his mind, desire and thought both sensibly and non-sensibly, and a profound landscape. The fire captured over the landscape is a signifier of pathos, while the dark blue deep sea is a signifier of ethos. As it is, the artist's painting depicts the view, scene and landscape of mind flowing between pathos and ethos. Pathos and ethos? Here, pathos may be an energy oxidizing uncontrollably and rapidly, while ethos may be an energy flowing coldly and slowly. Can we see the painting as the one depicting a dramatic event occurring in the mind where Yin and Yang energies rise and fall (or a deeper place than the mind or some basic place)? Here, the artist's painting seems to depict the mobility of the energy or its principle. Although it is invisible, it is a kind of energy or a case of the life phenomena. All in all, his painting depict energy and life.
Traditionally in the Asia, the energy of the universe and that of each of us are continuous in the same space. The phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty developed such Asian thought into a concept of the universal flesh. The universe is filled with the flesh (energy, air, anima, etc.,). So, subject and object cannot be distinguished from each other and 'you' and 'I' cannot be different. Here, the Western logic has been expanded (or reduced) to the extent that analysis is no longer possible and that dividing and splitting is no longer feasible. Here, a new perspective is open. Cezanne is inside his painting 'Mt. Saint Victoar, and vice versa. Likewise, I am inside the universe, and vice versa. Therefore, I can become a micro-universe.
To reemphasize, the artist's painting depicts a vision he saw with his profound eyes, and thus, it is a painting depicting energy and life as well as the principle of the genesis of the universe. In fact, his painting has a blurred and equivocal atmosphere with every known forms erased (at the beginning, the God reside in the dark), and the atmosphere evokes some pure energy, and together with the energy, we are urged to stand before a holy chaos at the dramatic moment when the universe was created. And the chaos is printed in every one of us as an original memory. Hence, his painting might be a spiritual one evoking such an original memory.
Again, there is a painting visible with our eyes closed. There is a painting more visible with our eyes closed, and there is a painting visible only with our eyes closed. In the process of depicting the image or the vision into a painting, it undergoes certain changes (in any case, the image cannot be depicted intact). Anyway, it is clear that the image played a role of minimum motive or first occasion. Thus, his painting seems to focus on a conceptual, abstract, mental and spiritual world rather than the sensuous and phenomenal world of materials. Paul Klee says that arts visualize the invisible. Drawing by Kim Kyung-rae who pursues the vision visible with our eyes closed seems to be an expression comparable to Klee's definition about the reason for the being of arts.



Kim  Kyung Rae


1978  Graduated from Hongik University
2009  Graduated from The Master Course in Design Graduate school, Donkook University
2008  8Persons'Exhibition of Artist Studio (Seoul Arts Center)
      Booth Solo Exhibition (Ho Gallery)
      The Best painters'Exhibition of the World
      Open Arts (Seoul Museum of Art)
2009  Solo Exhibition (Gallery Lamer)
2010  International Drawing Exhibition (Seoul Arts Center)
      Solo Exhibition (ABLE FINE ART NY Gallery)
2011  Solo Exhibition (Chosunilbo Gallery)
 Nov. Solo Exhibition (Insa Artsenter)

Year-long Exhibition
Yeongnamilbo Wellbing Center
(Yeongnam Tower B2, Shincheondong, Daegu)
Contact : 010-6800-5171
Add : Kangnamgu, Suseodong 712, Hanarum Apt. 106-101, Seoul-Korea
Mobile : 010-3728-8074
E-mail : 56evergreen@hanmail.net

Roh,Jin ah

Media Raiders No. 2: Envious Cyborgs

- By Lee, Chae young


“Envious Cyborgs” by Jinah Roh, the second nominee of Media Raiders, an annual competition for rising artists by Ilju arthouse, digs out and assays the traditional relationship among art, technology and human being.
Having projected the inquiries about the ontology of human being who lives the time of the technology-based culture, Jinah Roh tries to find hints to the answers in the existence of the cyborg which has an artificial but more extensive body on the basis of artificial intelligence. The cyborg captured in her imagination is not product imagined and illustrated as a foretoken of the future society, but a symbol of human being who is being mechanized into the cyborg; Let’s look around us; a cellular phone, a digital camera, an mp3 player, an electronic dictionary and calculator, a refrigerator, a quick oven, a car and so on; the electronic mechanism has been extended deeply into the every space of life and has dismantled and replaced the organs of the human body. Ms Roh pays attention to draw up the dramatic but disturbing contrast between the human body metamorphosed into the mechanism and the cyborg reproducing the organic human body. In her exhibition, machines (works of art) and human beings (spectator) come to be fallen into cyborgs together which envy each other.
You type, I’ll talk, an installation which uses the mechanism of cyborg and abstracts characteristics of her exhibition, presents a human size of a woman cyborg in which the face of the artist is cast. Consisted of exact instruments, plastic silicone and connecting lines which symbolize the silver cord so as to move the mouth and the eye human-like, it can communicate with spectators; It recognizes and responds to the questions raised by spectators who type the keyboard in front of it. What makes the situation more ironical is that spectators are permitted only to use the hands to operate the machine extending his/her ideas, but the cyborg in the main stage uses its organs of its own will ? programmed practices. So, the artistic space can be easily turned into a paradoxical space where the cyborgs try to imitate human beings and vice versa; we find ourselves entrusting the machine with our body, heart and brain.
By the contrast of the analog and the digital, Are you still playing the piano? draws a slice of digital civilization which holds way of the world with violence. The spectator is encouraged to play the installed hologram piano at the projected music with a mouse. But if someone touches any keys with a hand by chance or by curiosity, the system gives a written warning of “Error” with a sneering sound. In this staged situation, the spectator cannot help but give up the analog, a good-for-nothing, and depend upon the digital. But the digital provides accessible space only within its own database, so that it recognizes and treats simply as a transparent error what goes beyond its limitation. Especially human wills inadequate to its law cannot escape being ruined.
The artist said, “the user utilizing interactive media feels himself, or herself very free, but he, or she is confined in the space structured and conceived only for the programming.” We can see in her series of interactive artworks the satirized and cyborg-ed human being who leads an active life without any doubts in the prescribed space by the system and cherishes the illusion of being a master of the system. But this critical viewpoint is not resulted in a simple criticism on the technology-based civilization; Ms Roh heads for the argument by Donna Haraway, a theorist on feminism, who asserted to adopt and combine technology in order to increase the social change and collapse the traditional dichotomy between man and nature, man and machinery, and the traditional discriminations against sex, race, age and class. So the satire drawn by Ms Roh is projected against the old customs which have been buried in the dichotomy, so haven’t raised the ontological question about man and its extension. Also it is a song of precaution for the artist not to be fallen into the simple juxtaposition of art and technology or the improvisational fun caused by interaction biased toward visual effect and technological talent.

Roh, Jin ah

Ph.D Candidate of School of Media, Art&Technology, Sogang Univ.
2002 M.F.A The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Art&Technology Department
1998 B.F.A. College of Fine Arts, Seoul National Univ. Seoul. South Korea

Solo Exhibition:   ‘Geppetto’s Dream’, Nanji Galley, Seoul, Korea in 2010
Group Exhibitions:
<The New Epicenter :chapter 2 Post-Human at Wumin Art Center>, <Picasso &Einstein 3.0 at Seoul Art Center>,< ‘I- Robot II’ at Chosun Museum>,<'Digifesta 2010 Media Art Festival' at Gwangju Biennale Hall>,< ‘The First Decade of 21th Century’ at Gyeonghuigung Annex building of the Seoul Museum of Art>,< 'NO...' , at Gwangju Museum of Art>,< ‘I- Robot’ at  Soma Museum of Art> ,<'Hybrid Trend Contemporary Art Exhibition', at Hangaram Art Museum Seoul>,<Merz's Room' Media_City Seoul  at Seoul Art Museum>,< Selected Emerging Artists SeMA at Seoul Art Museum>

Jung, Boc su

A Memorandum of Existence: The Primary Relationship between Destiny and Desire

Kim Mi-jin (Professor, Hongik Graduate School of Art, Review & Planning)

Since 1979, starting with a private exhibition, Jung Boc Su has been working on the subject of the “body” drawing the face and the internal organs on the naked human form. He renders the internal organs on a stripped naked body with a bald head, drawing a simple face-the eyes, nose, lips, and ears in a three-dimensional manner, as if making a collage. The background of the canvas-as if connecting outer space and the human being-is left empty, while the individual and the society that surrounds him are represented by the human body, with words occasionally inserted here and there. Therefore, his drawings bring to mind anatomical charts that reveal unseen parts of the body, or of illustrations of meridian points commonly used in Eastern medicine. In order to expose the greed and excreting nature of humanity, Jung Boc Su refers to the stripped naked body, and like a tool kit takes apart, or amputates-so to speak-the area of the face, the insides and outsides of the body and reassembles them, creating human stories. Language is crucial in his work and by using metaphors in his titles, he is able to specify his subject matter, which assists in the viewer understanding his artistic motives and expressions. His symbolic and metaphoric way of creating art is communicated as an overall sensation through text and language.

In this private exhibition, his oil paintings, sculptures, and installation pieces from 2006 to 2011 are displayed, and unlike his previous works, in which drawings were dominant, these pieces are characterized by diverse mediums and bright, intense colors. Artificial flowers, dolls, masks, these objets d’art function as matieres on a canvas of paint, and the uninhibited touch and use of bright colors are an attempt to communicate the human forms pertaining to the times.

In the series, The Structure of Existence (2003-10, and 2004-10), Jung Boc Su illustrates that humans are beings of materialistic desires, an assemblage of parts. A chopped off face, body, and legs become fragments of organs and create a kind of microcosm on canvas, and as they connect they become one vision. On an empty background, these mannequin-like beings work with each other, and inside their heads or torsos, tiny parts attach or separate themselves, assembling the whole and operating as strategic instruments that comprise this world. In particular, the face can be attributed as operating as a kind of symbol of deceit that one can switch according to whether the situation is about faith, power, or money. In Existence's Mourning (2007-11), Anniversary (2011), The Art of Conversation I (2011), the expressions on the front, side, top, and bottom are all different on the masks, and are attached like a relief painting, extending these expressions beyond conventional limitations.

Masked people stand facing forward in the frames, imparting a sense of voyeurism, as they appear to be watching others without showing their own faces. At the same time, it is a work that wholly represents the face as a technical tool of communication that frequently changes expression in accordance with relationships and situations within society. These series also present three-dimensional works, created by drawing the interior of the human body on real mannequins. They are in stark contrast with the abstract and two-dimensional bodies, which appear rather virtuous and much like the image of God, and collide with the canvas, prompting the beholder to experience a new space and time. The ontological search of Jung, who has lived over half a century, ranges from human fundamentals-love, encounters, birth, death-o various social issues such as religion, freedom, politics and war. In Encounters (2006-11), faces are placed on top of human heads and genitalia; in Study of Relations (2006-11), one's ear is connected to another person's esophagus; in Nightmare-Childbirth (2005), a chest is a container and a mouth gives birth; Smiling Woman (2004-06) intensely stares, grinning ; The World Is (2005-11) depicts faces in various expressions yelling at the world; in Life (2007-08), the artist paints grey faces, which have endured harsh lives, and draws the phrase "Let us love life" like an echo. Just through facial expressions, all of these works deliver the artist's strong message. Facial expressions are represented as a function derived from an interaction between rules and relationships within society. Like Sartre's definition of a humanist, that is, in order to love humans one must first hate them, the faces of Jung contain sublimated lives from the bits of vomit. In Birth of Religion (2006-08), he presents the smiling face of God, whose hands-tools for indulging in materials-are cut off. The expression is that of nirvana, magnanimity and love. In contrast, the bodies sprinting towards something with every fiber of their beings are the motif of Obsession and Death.

In Freedom and Chaos (2010), body parts are even more dismantled and arranged freely in space. From the sign system of Deleuze and Guattari-where hands, the ultimate tool of technology, are contrasted with faces, the ultimate tool of language-the tools and language produced in a free competitive system emerge incessantly, creating only a chaotic state on canvas. On the other hand, in A Letter from Paradise (2008-2010), the man and woman lying naked on a bed of flowers appear peaceful. The middle-aged couple look like Adam and Eve, but have not succumbed to the temptation of the forbidden fruit, maintaining their innocence. The man has an erection yet he seems relaxed instead of desirous, and the woman is in fact sleeping in peace. This piece causes the viewer to simultaneously experience a point of view from above looking down, and a direct point of view, which allows empathy with the plastic flower petal objects attached to the canvas and the tree branches installed in front of the painting.

The spiral coexistence of the present and the primitive age in The Moment When a Flower Falls (2008-11), which was displayed with a three-dimensional work made from the head of a mannequin, present ontology within a macrocosmic world. Jung Boc Su continues to live and work in Korea, a nation that is experiencing drastic changes of modernization and ultramodernization, not only in politics and economy, but also in daily life. The personal story of relationships and communication experienced by the artist is concluding towards an epic saga of more maturity and depth. Today, events and accidents happening throughout the world are broadcast in real time and cause a bigger shock than any soap opera, taking us on an emotional rollercoaster. Living in this materialistic world of irrationality and madness, we can consider the life of the ordinary couple-existing along with nature and the time of the universe-a new paradise and a mystical model. In this exhibition, the personal memoranda of Jung Boc Su, previously conveyed as expressional paintings, freely move across mediums-paintings, sculptures and installation works-via raw materials found in the artist's daily life, expanding the senses of the beings of destiny and desire.   

Jung, Boc su 

1955 Born in Euiryung Kyongnam, Korea
1985 B.F.A in Painting College of Fine Arts, Hongik University, Seoul, Korea

1979~2011  the 21st Solo Exhibition

1995 Bachelor’s Painting, Hongik University, Seoul, Korea
1997 Korean Art 1997 - Humanism, Animalism, Mechanism, National Museum of Contemporary  Art, Kwachon
1997 FIAC’ 97, Paris
1998 Ahead of New Millennium, Kwangju Museum of Art, Kwangju
1998  Taipei Biennale, Taipei Fine Arts Museum
1999 Korean Pop, Sungkok Art Museum, Seoul
2000  The paintings that Make You Smarter, Savina Gallery, Seoul
2001 Korean Art 2001: Lottery of a Painting, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Kwachon
2002 Korean & Chinese Paintings 2002 New Facial Expression, Hangaram Museum at the Seoul  Art Center, Seoul
2003 Psycho Drama, Sungkok Art Museum, Seoul
2004 You Are My Sunshine, Korean Contemporary Art Museum 1960-2004, Total Museum, Seoul
2005 the 1st Pocheon Asia Art Festival, Pocheon Banweol Art Hall, Pocheon
2006 Korean Art 100 Years Tradition, Human, Art, Reality, the National Museum of  Contemporary Art, Kwachon
2007 Korean and Chinese Art Exhibition - Illusionary Giant, Sejong Art Center, Seoul
2008 Today’s Korean Art - Facial Expression of Art, Hangaram Museum at the Seoul Art Center,  Seoul
 Art in Busan 2008: Please Come Back to the Busan Harbor, Busan Museum of Art
 KAMI’s Choice “How Are You”, Noam Gallery, Seoul
 The 2nd Insa Art Festival - Between Beauty and Ugliness, Art Side Gallery, Seoul
2009 The Language of a Body, Touch Art, Paju
2010 Gaga Hoho, Woorim Gallery, Seoul
 Be Avid for a Body, Art Sagan Gallery, Seoul
 Power of Gyeonggi Do, Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Ahnsan
2011 Cross the Relationship and Duplicity. Art Side Gallery

 

HWANG HYUN SOOK

                               HWANG, HYUN SOOK

 

Reminiscences of Mother through an Aspect of Daily Life

Jin Seop Yoon (Art critic / Professor of Honam University)

Hyun Sook Hwang’s artworks painted with fabric dye on calico are like diaries that project the inner side of people originated from the daily life’s motif. This is why her artworks make the viewers be filled with sympathy. Her artworks truly make me wonder what it means to express one’s world depending on the analogue method in today’s visual environment in which the intensity of light, from so-called new media, grasps our attention through videos. However, it is true that when I think carefully, the more her artworks, which portray the warmhearted living world, rely on the analogue method, the more they comfort our hearts in return. This is because her artworks are like hometowns that bring the forgotten nostalgia back into our lives whenever we look at her drawings. What is more important is that the theme of Hwang’s upcoming exhibition is filled with one’s affection towards mother as if her drawings are dedicated to mothers. Hwang recalls the image of the mother, who had freshly drawn water in front of her and prayed for the family’s happiness, and expresses this through subject matters, such as hanbok, norigae, folding fan, and beoseon.

If we look for the origin of Hwang’s paintings in our tradition, Shinsaimdang’s paintings can be the model. Shinsaimdang’s paintings, which illustrate the graceful and dignified world of boudoir on a piece of paper through tranquil but elaborate touch, depict the internal world of noble household women whom took the painting as the means of spiritual growth. In this context, Hwang expresses an aspect of the modern family into a drawing. The subject matters that she likes to use are things that we often see at home, such as flowers, stationery supplies, furniture, books, wooden containers, etc. All of these things are well-thumbed by the housewives at home. Hwang chooses ordinary objects that we come across every day in daily life in her paintings. Her artworks drawn with slender strokes by using multi-colored dye are not bombastic or coercive but delicate, bright, warm, gentle, and at the same time, they look familiar to us. This aspect of friendly living world that brings in Hwang’s feelings and emotions conveys the message that modern homes are maintained by the housewives’ fine sense of care. This reminds us of the modern society’s problems, such as instant food culture represented by fast food, negligence of housework due to women’s participation in society, and break down of traditional values due to family nuclearization. Hwang’s drawings do not directly mention these social issues, but we are able to make conjectures of these facts from her drawings. The image of mother, the main motif that appears in Hwang’s drawings this time, represents the traditional figure of Korean mothers. The traditional figure of Korean mothers is the image of them devoting themselves for peace and happiness of the family. The subject matters that Hwang introduces in her drawings, such as freshly drawn water, jogakbo, beoseon, norigae, hanbok, etc.,symbolize the traditional figure of Korean mothers. Especially jogakbo draws attention because it uses the constituting principle that forms the foundation of a masterpiece.

Jogakbo is originally a household item crafted by recycling leftover fabrics from fabricating other clothing. It is an outstanding demonstration of our ancestors’ wisdom, and there is no better example of it. In a sense that jogakbo is a collection of fabrics from various origins put into one, jogakbo represents ‘hybrid’ that is discussed repeatedly nowadays. Hwang was inspired by jogakbo. She divided the display of her artwork into quadrilaterals of various sizes and positioned variety of flowers, beoseon, norigae, and millstones inside. Although objects of different sizes are arranged in a two-dimensional arrangement, emphasis is not specifically put in one object than others; the work is expressed in a sense of balance by taking an even view of the objects. Inside this time-consumed, elaborative work of art, referencing from classical fundamentals of art, she has attempted to demonstrate ‘Unity in Variety’. Looking at her masterpiece, one can sense a balance and regularity despite the variety of sizes and materials used: a very unique and mysterious artistic experience. Even though it is extremely difficult to have individual objects stand out yet still maintain viewer’s attention on overall work evenly, she achieved this through extremely meticulous and elaborate portrayal. Portraying through horizontal stroking technique that decorates the background of her artworks especially requires tremendous effort. From that, we can surmise the passion the artist has integrated into this work of art.

The series of iris flower paintings remarkably exhibit Hwang’s skills in realistic portrayal. The artwork’s detailed portrayal of flower petals based on constituting principles of vertical arrangement is truly remarkable. This series attempts to exhibit internal orderliness through the realistic portrayal shown in the work. Like this work, Hwang’s paintings depict the reality shown by the object, but also integrate the artist’s desire for new order through independent display and arrangement. The paintings are reality yet not truly real and dreams that are not dreams but reality. The work that best reflects her desires is the masterpiece painting of freshly drawn water placed in the center along with the scenery of days and months passing by. A pocket watch is placed in the left corner, which indicates that the motif of this artwork is time.

This artwork shows a new born baby growing to a girl, a girl to a middle-aged woman, and finally a middle-aged woman to an old woman in progress of time. In the core of it, there are reminiscences of her mother. Portraying this circle of life, the brevity of aging, and heartwarming atmosphere between the mother and daughter through uses of multitude of props is the world that Hwang’s recent works are presenting.

Suh, Kyoung ja

2005 CARROUSEL DU LOUVRE SALON -KOREA

- Suh, Kyoung-Ja – “The invisible world of descriptive method”-

The abstract circle of Suh, Kyoung Ja world is gradually spreading to its perimeter with evoking exhilaration and trembling of sensibility. Such visual explosion wriggles tastefully and aesthetically and it also stimulates us to feel a lively energy in our daily lives. Her artistic intention is to grasp the essential point by a minimal métier and to express her thought against the aspects of life; birth, production and increment of number of family member. She world be excited in searching for an invisible clue being surrounded by the reality along the effort making in exploration of the fine organic elements such as air, water, steam and plants.

Suh's art work, "The Meditation," would lead us toward the visible images, along the observation of the inner side of the constant impulsion within the secret of the mystic creation.

The descriptive method of her artwork has marvelously delineated the strength of life lying under the crude exterior shell which forms the contour of the object. She, in order to describe in such ways, has displayed a highly skilled delivery of brush based on the meticulous findings of the reality.

She assists to expose things that all creation including not limited, trees, the sky and stars could not recognize, and also disclose the souls that contain the volatility that can give a birth to each element. The very visit to the central element (core) would also invite us toward the intangible area or to the cogitative source of nature. Furthermore, these elements would produce the correlations among the cogitation, sensitivity and sense through constant changes in their external shapes.

Critic by Par Patrice de la Perriere

Suh, Kyoung ja

B.F.A in Western Painting, Hongik University

M.F.A in Engraving, Hongik University

2005      The 2nd Beijing International Art Biennale 2005 (China)

2008      The 3rd Beijing International Art Biennale 2008 (China)

[Solo Exhibitions]

2008      Solo Invitational Exhibition(9-Art Space, Bejing 798, China)

2009      Solo Invitational Exhibition (Shanghai, China Council)

2010      Solo Invitational Exhibition (Gallery GASAN)

2010      Solo Invitational Exhibition (Gallery SU)

2011      Solo Invitational Exhibition (Gallery Palais de Seoul)

[Group Exhibitions]

2009      Serotonin Exhibition Ⅱ (Seoul Museum of Art)

2010      The World Open Art Festival (Seoul Museum of Art, Mokpo National Art Center)

Hongik Exhibition (Gallery ChosunIlbo)

Sun Gallery 33^rd Anniversary Exhibition (Sun Gallery)

Dream In Dream Exhibition (Uijeongbu Art Center)

Finding the beauty of Love and Peace

(National Art Gallery of United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhadi, UAE)

The Memories (Kumho Art Gallery)

G20 International Art Festival 2010 (Gallery GAC)

Inner Strength   Exhibition  New York(Able  Fine Art NY Gallery)

Over 200 Exhibitions

 E-mail_ yungly@hanmail.net

Homepage_ www.suhkyoungja.com