Kyu-Nam Han
[Return to Artists Index]
I
interpret Korean Modernism within
Western context and vice versa—W
estern Modernism within Far Eastern
cultural context. I incorporate
traditional values and
methodologies, such as perspective
and chiaroscuro of the West,
and Chun (passage and grid)
from the East. I blend Eastern
isometric
perspective with
traditional Western linear
perspective painting to create a
fusion of both depth and
flatness,
and then apply calligraphic
principles to recreate new pictorial
images.
In
this work,
Central Park,
painted in 1999, acrylic on canvas
Han mixes two cultural genes
together. The images of the street
include cars, buildings, lights,
etc. and the mosaics of fragmented
color are masterfully demonstrated
on the canvas. Han repeatedly
superimposes and substitutes
structures and images by overlapped
lines of contours. The images, the
whole drama of the surface
come
under the relationship of
deconstruction resulted from the
effective usage of various grids.
At the same time, Eastern
conventional calligraphic
methodology has been employed as a
key
element in Han’s painting: 1)
Hieroglyphic images correspond with
structure and meaning.
2) Signified
becomes signifier. 3) Meaning
correlates with form resulting in an
altered sense
of totality, providing
both irony and ambivalence. 4)
Calligraphic gesture creates
action.
5) Binary opposition issues
transform into new perceptions.
There are continuous processes
of
forms deconstructed and
reconstructed of their meanings
occurring between the elements
of
hues, gradation, textures, strokes,
broken lines, etc. Han creates his
own form of pictorial
hieroglyphs.
He highlights the drama of his
paintings by introducing dots on
dots, orchestrating
a symphony with
a theme—a synthesis of opposites: a)
figure/ground; b) image/structure;
c) signifier/signified; d)
internal/external; e)
language/being; f)
perspective/flatness. Together,
these ambivalent elements are
converging into one single totality.
Han
is a Formalist and
Multicultural Pluralist. He has
searched for new generative sources
within
a global cultural context in
order to invent a new way of making
an art form from his past and
present,
which, in art vernacular,
can be deemed Modernist,
Post-Modernist, or Neoclassical
Modernist.
Perhaps a better way of
saying this is that he is a “genetic
engineer in painting”.
kyunamhanny@yahoo.com
