Viewing the Front Page Artwork of the Newsletter (13) ‘Waterscape_Water Flower 1657’ by artist Chang-Ae Song
2017-01-02 l Hit 1143
Viewing the Front Page Artwork of the Newsletter
(13) ‘Waterscape_Water Flower 1657’ by artist Chang-Ae Song
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Artist Chang-Ae Song works with a water sprayer, not a brush. In the places where dark paint is removed, delicate and mysterious figures are revealed. This month’s newsletter introduces "Waterscape_Water Flower 1657", painted with ingenious techniques by artist Chang-Ae Song.
The work is part of the "Waterscape" series that artist Chang – Ae Song has been working on since 2013. The word 'waterscape' literally means ‘scenery with water’ and, in the series, it has a dual meaning: it uses ‘water’ to paint ‘water.’ It is very unique in that the artist’s work is ‘painted with water’ instead of paint. This expressive technique was developed by her after many experiments to unite the form and content of the work. It is made by spraying water on a pigmented canvas and wiping away the colored pigment painted on the surface. In this way, the paintings, in which the shapes seem to be drawn elaborately with a fine line brush, create a mysterious atmosphere that glows with subtle light.
Artist Chang-Ae Song explained, "I wanted to embody the Eastern concept of 'emptiness.’ My work originated with the idea of how to visually reveal a kind of energy beyond what is visible. At first, I simply used an eraser and then air to remove the paint. However, water flowed out of the air compressor and that created problems. So I decided to spray water instead. And that was the beginning of my ‘water painting’ technique.
She decided to use water for her paintings, but it was not as easy as she thought it would be in terms of learning the method. The artist developed the technique that she uses now after six months of wrestling with water.
To work with water, the artist commented, she has to finish the work quickly before the paint dries. To do so, she needs to be connected to the water, which requires extreme concentration.
Therefore, the artist thinks her paintings paint themselves; she does not think that she paints them. She also added that she creates work that reveals something by itself rather than work that is directly expressed by her.
The artist emphasized several times that she unites with the water while explaining her method of creating work. She said, “In modern society, human beings are alienated and unhappy because the world and the self are separated. Since I live in this world, I asked myself how I can be happy and, at the same time, I asked about the dignity of life and human nature that are lacking in this modern society. I came to think of ‘water’, the purest thing in nature, while searching for a sense of self and an answer to fundamental and macroscopic questions through painting like what is this world that we live in and where did it come from.”
Through this process, the artist devised 'Waterscape' that not only takes ‘water’ as a theme, but also uses ‘water’ as a medium, creating harmony between content and form. The artist said that 'Waterscape' will be a lifelong subject for her to experiment with, since it is not complete just because she found the answer. Instead, she needs to reaffirm and purify the topic constantly.
The artist said that the "Thousand Tears & Thousand Lives" project, which is underway, has strengthened her decision. When the Sewol ferry disaster occurred, the artist produced a thousand drops of water to overcome the trauma of this enormous tragedy. While she worked with a thousand drops of water, she thought that they are drops of her breath. Then, through social network services (SNS), she collected photos of daily life taken on the day of April 16th, the day of the Sewol ferry disaster, and then incorporated the photos into the work. This project is expected to run for three years from 2015 to 2017.
Let's hear the artist's remarks on the work.
“In creating this work, I repeatedly said to myself, ‘I am crazy or ignorant. I am at least one of them.’ I couldn’t understand myself rationally, since I repeated one thing a thousand times to create the work. But now that I think about it, I feel like I sowed a thousand seeds. I do not know how these seeds will grow, but I think the earth has become hard. And as I worked repetitively, I thought about the essence of art, and I realized that life and death cannot be separated. It seems that I have just found light and comfort in the darkness of death through this work. I also thought that I could fulfill my calling as an artist if I share pain and emotion with people, though it is a momentary thing."
The artist's " Thousand Tears & Thousand Lives " project can be found on YouTube (https://youtu.be/aHJTXoxqoMc).
2017.1. 11 ⓒKorean Artist Project
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