Half Opened Door: Kwon Hyo Min, Park Ido, Choi Ji mok
This exhibition attempts to overview the previous achievement of the three resident artists, Hyomin Kwon, Ido Park and Jimok Choi, who have consistently explored each realm, and to grasp how they would develop their activities while participating in the residency program.
The three artists have an obscure perception of what they depict. Typically, this obscurity can cause a certain sentiment similar to anxiety for viewers; normally, this phenomenon often occurs when they fail to systematize or categorize subjects that they look at depending on genres, forms and periods in their rationalizing systems. It not only indicates the absence of protocols which properly help the audience to generalize and comprehend the visual practice but also results from the difficulty of communication which is fundamental to establishing groups and communities.
The ambiguity is achieved by keeping an intentional distance from describing a specific form, though it does not stem from the desire to hide or distort what they express. It rather can be understood as a manifestation of inadequacy or limits shared by the three artists who rely on a single sense—the visual language. As though a deliberate and long silence in a conversation reinforces and efficiently reminds of what the speaker wants to emphasize, by controlling the degree of objective description details of the targets, the artists manage to enrich the overtones and draw subtle emotions that they try to convey in their works.
The expectation of a possibility of a clear interpretation of artworks can be an irresistible appeal, despite the repeating futile illusion of it. In this context, Ido Park’s beeswax paintings, Hyomin Kwon’s micro laminating reliefs and Jimok Choi’s Assemblages draw attention by suggesting personal narratives inhabiting under the surface of atypical presentations or forms instead of offering an immediate clarity. Since what they describe flexibly responds to every potential interpretation, it plays a role of a catalyst allowing the viewers to discover their authentic way of appreciation when they encounter the works, rather than remaining a source of the collective discomfort brought about by the scarcity of storytelling.
Hyomin Kwon (b.1985) graduated from Daegu University, receiving a BFA in Painting and an MFA in Painting & Drawing at Pratt Institute. Kwon addresses questions about how the fascination with visual features such as colors and textures and how individual tastes influence aesthetic presentations. Her recent project, ‘Gallstones’, has a form of small mass consisting of various colors and scales of resin fragments accumulated in an irregular yet sophisticated arrangement. Due to the solid and transparent property of resin, it creates a rich spectrum of overlaid lights and ultimately, the outcome gains a dense decorative aspect. Contrasting to its multicolor, tiny scales and delicate layers, the work precariously placed on a wall seems to signify the artist’s careful act of staking up her glittering desire within social conventions.
Ido Park (b.1983) completed a BFA in Fine Art at Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Art et de Design de Dijon and an MFA in Fine Art at Haute école des arts du Rhin. On the boundary between reality and fiction, Park surveys the universal human life patterns or circumstances around them and investigates the function of painting corresponding to them. He is recently more interested in portraying plenty of senses and textures of natural subjects with various media based on his own narratives. His landscapes provide a particular impression of nuances led by his unique usage of specific materials including beeswax and soaked paper.
Jimok Choi (b.1981) received a BFA in Painting at Suwon University and an MFA in Fine Art at Muthesius Kunsthochschule. Choi suggests new perspectives and experiences by breaking the existing frame or social agreements and unveiling an unfamiliar border. He first collects objects possessing traditional significances or a culturally symbolic context; later, he disassembles their physical features and recombines them to make them inside out. This new structure of the object exposing the cross sections on its façade delivers surreal images, and the physically disintegrated target presents a new concept. Thus, as the boundaries trapped in paradigms turn reverse, the artist’s intervention allows the overturned ideas to emerge as an intense visual effect.
