Artist Statement
Statement About Hey I’m afraid of the bright shine , Man looking at the floor
My painting is a stage of tragedy.
The characters on the stage,
indoors or outdoors, are the main
characters in their tragedies.
Those who are placed in the
open space of outdoor nature are
in extreme fear. Because they
don't know where to attack them.
In the interior spaces, on the
other hand, they sit in vanity and
loneliness. And they are in the
ruin like a shelter that through a
storm of fear, looking down at the
floor or door. The eyes of the
characters in the painting are
facing upwards or looking back
outside of the crouched body.
Although they tried to avoid it,
they looked at the object of fear
that was impossible. Fear is
natural to those who have a life .
You must always escape from all
that drives you near death.
Statement About ‘Eden Play’ series
In the ‘Eden Play’ series, the figures in the Bible appear on the canvas and play scene of everyday life, based on the artist’s experiences from my family in a male dominated, authoritative, and conventional community of our society. In the Eden play series, three major characters come out repeatedly.
First, a male as the father or the devil runs around with a wicked and angry look. The my mother represented as Maria with a weak and sick face reveals the position of a passive woman in the family. Lastly, young sheep of the most powerless speak to not only the weakest found in any group, but also me and my older sister who had to live under the scary and violent circumstances caused by a patriarchal father. Ironically , I was born as Catholic from a devoted Christian family and raised with a Christian view of life, but disharmony between my catholic teachings and the insecure reality has led into her jocular and dramatic artworks.
Statement About Baudelaire’s Revenants series
Baudelaire’s Revenants reflects the period when I used to work at a bar in Seoul, where I kept caricaturing numerous types of people I met everyday on a company ad notepad.
The guests were mostly men dropping by after work, and they often let out their despair and anger while drinking.
The feeling of misery that their behavior transmitted led me to translate those caricatures into the rough surface of the wood panel painting as portraiture of our current conditions of life, where we internalize our common, daily agony. The depicted persons appear as like figures from Baudelaire’s poetry; fallen, isolated and narcissistic.
