Viewing the Front Page Artwork of the Newsletter (16) ‘The Perfect Garden’ by artist WON SeoungWon
2017-03-22 l Hit 1038
Viewing the Front Page Artwork of the Newsletter
(16) ‘The Perfect Garden’ by artist WON SeoungWon
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Won SeoungWon is an artist who observes people around her and creates work based on her observations. The fantastic images she creates are actually stories of specific people but they are also stories of our own. To commemorate this coming April, the season when flowers bloom, I will introduce the work “The Perfect Garden,” which depicts a garden tended by a perfectionist, as the cover art of this month’s newsletter.
Artist Won SeoungWon’s work always starts by observing ‘people’.
The artist explained, “As I interact with people: family, friends, and acquaintances whom I meet once a year or every few years, my emotions toward them changes and the depth of the emotions also shifts. I present social problems through actual people around me by making metaphorical work mainly using animals and landscapes.”
The work "The Perfect Garden" introduced here is a parody of the personality of a person with perfectionist tendencies.
At the center of the work, you can see the tendencies: the garden trees are well-trimmed and red yardsticks are flawlessly placed on the lawn. But when you step out of that perfect garden a little bit, a pile of garbage appears. Moreover, frost settles on faraway mountains. It seems like the cold air could cover the garden at any moment and it is questionable whether the perfectionist who was doing the gardening knew about it or not. It is funny to see deer aloofly feeding on grass and raccoons bringing trash into the garden in the meantime.
Artist Won SeoungWon commented on the contents of the work, “When I observe perfectionists around me, they force or require others to be perfect like themselves according to their idea of perfection, though they are not perfect in many areas. What would it be like, if one of these perfectionists created a garden? He or she would try to make it perfect by arranging the north, south, east, and west and carefully planting trees. But there is a pile of garbage on the side of the perfect garden, and soon the season will change. The perfectionist does not even think about removing the garbage nor do they recognize the change of the weather, and only measures things with yardsticks. Nobody is perfect in this world. I wanted to show that someone might be perfect in certain areas, but the rest could be a mess.”
In fact, the work was created four years ago. Though she made the piece, it is not easy to remember what was in the picture that you worked on four years ago after hearing only the title of the work. She mentioned that it is because she can only make seven to eight pieces in three to four years. For that, she gives the following explanation.
“Once I decide on the main character of my work, I have to worry about finding things that match the image and arranging them in the picture. Some people say that the same ‘trees’ are showing up every time, but they are different each and every time. All those trees represent the main character’s image.”
She added, “Like what I said, everything that appears in the work symbolizes the image of the main character. For example, the deer that appear in this piece express the perfectionist's idea of him or herself being aloof, and the raccoons express other people’s perception of the perfectionist. The reason I chose a raccoon to be that symbol is because a raccoon looks cute and nice; it is chubby and has dark areas around its eyes, but it is actually bad; it breaks down hard work and causes trouble. The perfectionist I saw was actually like this. As I look for things that match a certain image, just like the example above, I cannot help but spend a lot of time finishing my work. I can clearly remember what was I thinking while creating work that is even older than this.”
Eventually, the artist concluded that people seem to be more receptive when they are compared to animals or images, rather than to be given advice linguistically in the same sense.
Artist Won SeoungWon has recently been working on replacing 'jobs' with landscapes. The artist says that she has interacted with people who have different jobs and become interested in their jobs. She observes various professionals; doctors, researchers, journalists, IT industry workers, financial professionals and professors; and questions their reasons for choosing these jobs, then translates them into landscapes.
The artist’s new work that is still underway can be seen at her solo exhibition in Arario Gallery in Seoul from May 11th to the end of June.
2017. 4. 12.ⓒKorean Artist Project
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