Viewing the Front Page Artwork of the Newsletter (12) ‘Times Square’ by artist Myung-Su Ham
2016-12-19 l Hit 1215
Viewing the Front Page Artwork of the Newsletter (12)
‘Times Square’ by artist Myung-Su Ham
 Times Square, 2013, Oil on canvas, 220 x 274.5 cm |
The year of the Red Monkey was an exceptionally eventful year and is coming to an end. It was hard to find the usual year-end atmosphere anywhere in the city due to the current unsettled state of affairs. However, in order to comfort the suffering of all of us this year and to look forward to a better new year, I chose《Times Square》, by artist Myung-Su Ham, for the front page artwork for the December issue of the Korean Artist Project newsletter.
This work was inspired by artist Myung-Su Ham’s impression of Times Square in New York City at midnight on December 31, 2012. The artist reminded the moments by saying, “I had been working with cityscapes at that time, and I wanted to deal with the climax of cityscapes, so I went to Las Vegas around Christmas and then to Times Square on New Year’s Eve. At that time, Psy, a singer who became famous with the song ‘Gangnam Style’, was performing in Times Square. There were too many people, so I could not see the stage in person and used an iPad to watch the live performance.”
With the completion the work《Times Square》artist Myung-Su Ham ended the cityscape series that he had begun in 2006. The artist does not simply paint appearances. He argues that cities resemble human desire. He said, “At first, I painted cities' daytime landscapes. Then I gradually moved to night views, and, as I focused on nighttime scenes, I was able to see the neon signs of buildings. The splendor seen in Shinjuku, Las Vegas, and Times Square was like a blast furnace from which inner desires burst out. I was less immersed in cities after those experiences, and it might have been because I thought I saw cityscapes at their peak.”
 Artist Myung-Su Ham’s recent work, stored in his studio without a title. 2016, oil on canvas, 193.9 x 259.1 cm |
After finishing his cityscape series, he recently turned his interest to nature. The artist commented, “After finishing the work,《Times Square》, I started getting interested in things that are the opposites of cities, such as deserts, skeletons, and ruined or hollow things. While working on the skeleton series, I began to look more and more at life and death. My gaze naturally moved to blooming and falling, eating and being eaten, and being born and dying. I think these topics will be explored for a long time to come.”
It is not only the theme, but also the style that changed. Artist ‘Myung-Su Ham’s unique style, sometimes like a beast's hair and sometimes like noodles, originated with a fundamental question about painting. In the late 1990s, with the essential question of 'what does reproduction mean?', the artist painted upside-down to replicate an upside-down painting by Georg Baselitz. It is a portrait of a person from a distance, but it was a task to think about the inconsistency between seeing, being seen, and perceptions through the work when the direction of the brush strokes and gravity are reversed. As the artist was expanding the series, he enlarged and revealed gaps between brush strokes to express a sense of space. The various textures, such as fur, noodles, and rain-like marks, are the result of him focusing on creating brushstrokes.
 Partial image of recent work. His attempts to express movements rather than textures are revealed through the work. |
The work,《Times Square》, shows the climax of desire through the buildings that seem to twinkle and move, expressed with his noodle-shaped brush strokes. The artist tries to express movements rather than textures in his recent work, after repeated texture experiments.
“I could not express moving birds, butterflies, or blossoming flowers by capturing only one scene. I wanted to express such afterimages through the movements of brush strokes,” artist Myung-Su Ham explained.
Unfortunately, there is no way to see his new work in the near future, since the artist has only recently turned to this new theme and brushstrokes. The artist described his intent to communicate with viewers in a completely new way after preparing his new work a little more.
2016. 12. 27 ⓒKorean Artist Project
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