Exhibition Information

			Artist Statement

My work deals with images that I encounter in my surroundings. Out of numerous images overflowing everywhere, some images draw and grab my attention regardless of my will. The visual experience where my attention lies is a starting ground of my work. My desire to possess those images in my own way and to share my experience with others by showing them is my motivation to make work. I usually deal with images from daily life; however, I also travel afar to collect images in unknown places. In my earlier body of work, I have used visual images that only spectacular spaces in the city can provide such as swimming pools, airports, skyscrapers, boulevards, galleries or art museums. I was more drawn to the artificial space where nature is eradicated and synthetic order is applied. However, changes in residence and thus in my boundaries have brought changes in subject matter of my work. I usually draw landscapes I encounter in my travel and trivial matters in the daily life, and, in the natural process of my making work, I have come to realize that I was focusing on the nature. Two different subject matters attract my attention and induce positive visual experience. The visually attracted subject matters start whole new narratives while transferred onto the canvas. I begin to wonder why these subjects need to be represented in the particular 2D genre called “painting”. Inspiration from looking at the landscape is transformed into painterly characteristics that is only innate to the work of a painting. Despite what I have captured with my eyes from the landscape, picture plane holds the traces of my handling paints like dripping. While I retain the representation of the subject matter, I deliberately manifest the tension and the balance within the two distinct elements by emphasizing fluidity of the paints as a material. I have tried to place my painting balanced between the two, and I wish that it exists in the boundary without leaning to one side. 

In the exhibition “On the Road Again”, I show the works based on my personal experience on the road to a new town. Two bodies of work from different time periods are shown: one from the journey from Korea to Utah, the US, in summer of 2019 and the other from rural towns in the state of New York years ago. Due to personal circumstances of having to locate to new places and adapt every two to three years, I am always on the road once I am finally settled down. The state of Utah gives me intense impression that are far from any other places I have lived in. Wherever you go, you inevitably face mountains since a long range of mountains runs along the east of Utah. Also, mountains in Utah have more brown hues unlike ones in Korea; thus to me, they are unfamiliar and phenomenal and have become the subject of my paintings. In the other body of work, I actively respond to images from nature that filled rural towns in New York. Poinsettia and holly bushes seen in the town are from nature; however, they differentiate themselves from other wild plants since they are grown by people and consumed as iconic Christmas plants making them more artificial natural object. They also remind me of Christmas season and make me excited and nostalgic. 

I have used enamel paints in the work as usual. The material characteristic of enamel paints is very effective in showing fluidity of the paints. By pouring and dripping the enamel paints, they randomly mix each other on the surface and allow for accidents to happen. Such coincidence discourages literal depiction of forms and rather reveals abstract components to the full extent. Enamel paints’ glossy finish of the ground surface obstructs audiences’ view to prevent from looking at the depicted images and reflects off the view out of the picture frame. Through audiences’ view moving repeatedly between in and out of the picture plane, I anticipate that their view also becomes fluid. Whether subjects are seen afar or up close, both mountains and plants are from one root called “nature”. The distance between the viewed and the viewer yet welcomes the viewer to the vastly different landscape. By allowing different distances while viewing my work, I invite people to experience various layers between the two disparate components like abstract vs representational, hot vs cold, and coincident vs deliberate. 
[출처] 강유진 개인전 <On the Road Again (다시 떠나다)>|작성자 ZAHA