Artist’s statement

by Insook Hwang

I believe that art should be something more than material, and I intend to convey something spiritual and meaningful by creating unique and magical forms of my own.

Over the years, I’ve dealt with the various kinds of violence found in civilization as my subject matter. Combining techniques from drawing, stamping and painting I have created various techniques of cloning and produced an idiosyncratic style of digital drawings. The scale of my works ranges from huge wall installations beyond 16m in length to sizes as small as 5 inches. The materials that I have used for both my three dimensional and two dimensional works have ranged from such diverse materials as balloons and prefabricated objects to metal, cloth, rice paper, salt, wax and plastic.

The distinctive characteristics of my work lie in the repetitive and unexpected playful combinations of and between images. For creating unique and intriguing images, I combine mechanical techniques with a personal touch, using techniques of computer manipulation and printing with painting, stamping and collage. For creating spontaneous combinations of images I use rubber stamps of my own carving.

The images created in my work are grotesque, humorous and very dynamic while their meaning is symbolic as well as very allusive. The images in my works are like poems. They consist of highly condensed symbols and metaphors. For example, the horror and consciousness of violence are transformed into many different enchanting images like a child, robots and insects, flower-like shapes and imaginary creatures. I create these allegorical images with the repetitive accumulation of simple images such as fists, guns, grenades and missiles. The organically abstracted cartoon-like fists and guns represent unconscious and internal violence in human beings. In contrast the more representational and mechanical images of guns and grenades, and the images of computer chips on which violence-related text is written represent various acts of external violence found in civilization.

I have been developing a unique combination of these techniques and marvelous images further more by mixing various techniques found in old eastern landscape paintings with digital elements, photography and techinques of sewing. Through these images created by my extremely acute insight and esthetic sensibilities, conceptually I constantly and critically relate myself to our contemporary world.