Hyun Jin Kwon Visual Poetry – 조나단 굿맨(Jonathan Goodman)

Hyun Jin Kwon, like a number of artists of her generation, has spent time in New York City, studying fine art—painting in particular. Again, like others in her group, Kwon is familiar with both Western and Asian attitudes toward abstract expressionist art, which dies hard even in the West, where it has been part of the contemporary art scene since the early 1940s. Her “Visual Poetry” series shows that she is well aware of the kinds of problems that make up a complicated, double relationship to Asian painting practice and Western abstract art. In some ways, the relations between the two are not so very different, in the sense that certain effects in Asian ink painting mimic similar expressions in work from America. The point is that boundaries and spheres of influence are no longer mutually exclusive. As a result, Kwon, an artist from Korea, is free to develop a style that corresponds to what can only be called a global expressionism, whose roots may be found in both the long tradition of ink painting and the relatively new perceptions of abstract art. The melding of influences is no longer considered outlandish or overly ambitious; this is because abstract painting’s achievements are well traveled and well known.

Kwon is clearly a winner here, in a situation that suits her talents extremely well. She is a brilliant painter of color and presences, whose forceful organic style meets up with a polished sense of composition in allover paintings. The waves of color might be the environment of dreams or lyric perception—a concept she nods to by titling her series “Visual Poetry.” Poetry, the literary art closest to painting, is invoked here as the schema of what amounts to a sacred ritual, in which the artist makes the effort to capture the sublime. The transcendent use of abstract imagery resolves in relations that complement the color scheme that activates so beautifully the picture plane before us; by choosing to work in a series, Kwon recognizes the contemporary importance of exploring as many aspects as possible of a particular process—in this case, the overall treatment of colors and form. Interestingly, despite the clear presence of American design and influence, Kwon’s work really is very much her own. It looks like her own art in a field that is crowded with imitators of great painters like de Kooning, Pollock, and Gorky. Perhaps the fact that she is Korean and therefore able to appreciate her own culture has resulted in an independent style.

The larger question facing an artist like Kwon has to do with the nature of her style. Can one still make interesting abstract art, at a time some several decades after its highest point? Western art values point regularly to making it new, and it can be argued that abstract painting is a movement whose time has passed. By choosing to paint in the way that she does, Kwon shows us that she has committed herself to a tradition in the hopes of renewing it for the sake of contemporary art. Interestingly enough, her swirling waves of color argue for a broad range of influences that go back as far as Kandinsky; at the same time, Kwon deliberately follows her penchant for the beautiful, which in light of a currently politicized art esthetic can seem somewhat beside the point. To her credit, though, the artist remains unfazed by an overly intellectualized milieu, reaching instead for a style that would give pleasure rather than judge social issues. Her painting maintains its newness in part by embracing its past; in doing so, we see someone committed to a poetic outlook, someone still alive to the allure of beauty for its own sake.

The paintings are compelling statements that offer endless variations on a theme. In the work Visual Poetry No. 2, we see the artist works out a theme of light-brown stalactites that make their way into the center of the composition, surrounded by white paint and met by a black form rising from the bottom of the painting. Dark purple splotches cover much of the lower end of the painting. The interaction of color and form is ingenious, with a good amount of mystery as well. It is clear that the artist thinks with her brush, rather than assume an overly intellectualized point of view. The painting encompasses the colors of a landscape without referring directly to anything that would seem like the natural world. This is achieved mostly by Kwon’s use of organic forms, which fit into each other like parts of a puzzle. In Visual Poetry No. 4, the artist uses even more vibrant colors—luminescent green, blue, yellow, yellow, and orange—that take on the subdued brilliance of stained glass. Again, as throughout the series, Kwon works with organic rhythms: masses of brilliant hue meet each other like continental plates. There is a feathering effect on the upper half of the painting; small bits of color cover over a green that seeps through the layer above it.

In Visual Poetry No. 3, the viewer experiences the colorful surface as a tour de force of painting. A major, pink abstract structure that one could characterize as a bone dominates the right half of the painting. It is met by a brown mass that breaks up in small parts in the center of the canvas. In the upper left, wisps of different colors—green, pink, some white and blue—give the work its thematic complexity of hue. Sometimes the effect of the forms suggests marine life; sometimes the forms can only be read as examples of pure abstraction. To Kwon’s credit, the series is consistently interesting and belongs, as her series title asserts, to the world of poetry. The beauty we find in her eloquent works is subtle but penetrating as art. Taken together, the works deliver an experience greater than the sum of their individual parts, which as discrete paintings already have a strong impact. As a New York writer, I am somewhat at a loss to explain why painting has lost some of its luster in this city; this may be because the art esthetic in New York is highly conceptual, being oriented toward the intellect. As I have said, Kwon thinks with her brush, which is a different attitude entirely. Her paintings remain memorable because she believes in the medium.