Viewing the Front Page Artwork of the Newsletter (15) ‘A Sing for Love’ by artist Ji Yoon Hong
2017-02-27 l Hit 1056
Viewing the Front Page Artwork of the Newsletter
(15) ‘A Sing for Love’ by artist Ji Yoon Hong
 A Sing for Love, 2013, C-print Mounted on Plexiglas, Ø: 40cm |
Buds show up one by one on the bare branches of winter trees and start to announce the coming of spring. To commemorate the return of spring, this month’s newsletter introduces artist Ji Yoon Hong's "Love Song", which features colorful flowers, birds, and Sijo: a traditional three-verse Korean poem.
This work is part of the ‘My Favorite Song’ series by Ji Yoon Hong. It is on a canvas filled with an abundance of colorful flowers, many-winged birds, and a verse from a love song from Chunhyangga, one of Korea’s dramatic traditional songs. It was exhibited in《Hangeul Project – Let’s play Hangeul.》held in the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History in commemoration of the 567th Korean Character Hangeul Proclamation Day in 2013 (October 7 - October 13, 2013).
This work began by composing the artist’s own poetry with oriental sentiments. In traditional Asian culture, a poem is written not only for the sake of ‘poetry’, but also for a few more reasons; adding rhythm to it, singing it, and painting the story of it, and people enjoyed all of them under the name of Shishuhua. However, in the modern era, Shishuhua has been divided into literature, song, and painting. The artist writes, paints, and records videos of her favorite lyrics from her ‘My Favorite Song’ series and, then combines and edits the various media to create synesthesia. Artist Ji Yoon Hong describes her work as ‘Asian fusion.’
In fact, if someone mentions oriental painting, people usually imagine a painting of the Four Gracious Plants painted with one stroke of a brush or a landscape painting that depicts ideal places, which might be somewhere in the heart of the mountains. However, this artist surprises audiences every time with her work by completely reversing their expectations: flowers that should be on the canvas are actually within a thicket and installed as a light box in the exhibition hall, and she also carries out performances on the street.
Artist Hong explained, “I have always done a lot of research on tradition and modernity. Modernity for me does not relate to space and time. I was interested in how the discourse of the contemporary art and the attitude of the artist can be incorporated into oriental painting. When I started working about a decade ago, I focused on mixing new oriental paintings and modern elements with present-day multimedia and humanistic thinking. Now, I am more interested in expressing oriental thoughts, emotions, elements and aesthetics than oriental painting itself.” In 2015, she published a book titled 「Asian Fusion by Hongjiyoou」that explains her philosophy described above.
If you look closely at the artist's work, you will find repeatedly appearing birds with colorful flowers and wings with fluorescent colors. The artist explained that she expresses the five cardinal colors graphically, which express a festival that comes after suffering, and that she ended up painting with fluorescent colors.
She stated that the existence of flowers and birds cannot be identified in a word because a number of petals gather to form a single flower, and numerous feathers gather to form a bird. The artist explained that she seeks to pay attention to the gaps and layers of the East and West, and the past and future, rather than using a dichotomous approach toward them. At the same time, her painting expresses the superiority and uniqueness of femininity. Through the painting of flowers and birds; the painting genre of women and children, not like landscape painting, the painting genre of classical scholars; she wanted to express the ultimate extravagance that men of this system could not depict.
 Image of the work exhibited at the Changwon Sculpture Biennale last year, ‘Kiss the Rain Drops’, 2016, Stainless steel, Urethane painting, 5.3 x 3.6 x 3.6m |
The artist created patterns using flowers and birds, which are major subjects in her work, and was able to create design-related pieces. After she looked at oriental paintings through computer graphics, she was convinced that oriental painting could deal with the voice of the modern era. The artist not only succeeded in fine art but also expanded her realm into design, interior design, and fashion by combining her work with installation, photography, graphic design and other visual media.
The artist said, “At first, my work became controversial in the solemn Oriental painting art scene. In fact, in the world of Oriental painting, even young artists create solemn pieces. Many viewers, who are not familiar with my work and me, assume that my work is made by a young artist and I really appreciate such responses. Nowadays, there are many people who think of my work as contemporary art rather than Oriental painting and I am grateful for those people. I attempt to deal with the diversity of contemporary art, which is the main talking point and framework of my pieces, through oriental thinking and aesthetics.”
2017. 3. 15.ⓒKorean Artist Project
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