Kyoungmin

Curatorial Rationale

The theme for my exhibition is “emotions”. The fundamental purpose of my work is to properly face and express the emotions I am currently feeling. Emotions have a very mysterious aspect. It is invisible, but so intense that it allows people to connect themselves and others, and to become a part of reality. At the same time, it makes us laugh, be in awe, and feel heartbreakingly sad. In simple words, emotions are what make people have more humanity. Although all emotions are necessary and valuable, we often make the mistake of dividing our emotions into negative and positive ones. To use emotions wisely to help us, nothing is more important than understanding them. It is my hope that the audiences who explore each artwork depicting the artist's emotions will also be able to look back on their emotions and inner sides, and express them without any embellishment.

My artworks use the same medium, acrylic paint, but have different styles with each other. Although it has the theme of “emotions”, I seek artworks that express my emotions in my own way as an artist rather than the emotions anyone can see through facial expressions, so that the audience can interpret them from the fundamental story that my work depicts. Therefore, I commonly absent the eye in all works. This is because when we try to convey a certain message, I think words occupy very little weight while non-verbal attitudes such as eyes play the most important role. At first, since I was not sure about my techniques and my theme, I explored different art styles using a variety of mediums, such as colored pencils, watercolor painting, and charcoal, before working on my main artwork. Based on my practices, I felt the most passionate about acrylic work which is very flexible. In order to study the technology using acrylic, I looked for different works by various artists. However, as I was still a beginner, I could not learn anything through works that used high-level techniques. I eventually found the works of Yue Minjun, who is best known for oil paintings depicting himself in various settings, and was inspired by his manga style artwork. I believed that manga-style work would blend in well with acrylic painting.

‘Relationships and Masks’ depicts myself wearing a mask, inspired by Persona's mask series. The white mask, which will not be given any meaning, simply contains the basic shapes of the eyes and mouth. The shape of the eye, not containing any emotion or meaning, also coincides with the absence of the eye, a common symbol of my artwork. As the theme is "emotion", the background of the work is kept white to minimize the boundary with reality. When drawing the woman in the work, I used an actual photo of myself to draw the same hair, clothes, and shadows in order to portray them as realistically as possible with the real me. ‘Obstacle', 'Obsession and Courage', and 'Nostalgia' also used the photos of my own hands and photos from the past as the resources to make them closer to my reality. A woman's black hair forms a negative space, a graphic weight, which gives a meaning of a bad situation that can occur by wearing a mask such as forgetting the real me. The white background and black graphic weight are included in all works. The black graphic weight also has a contrasting effect with the white background, allowing it to catch the audience’s attention and focus on the object. However, in the case of ‘Anxiety’, it is different. According to the meaning contained in the work, it is never the student's fault that they feel anxious because they cannot find the purpose of their study. Therefore, the negative space cannot be included in the student himself.

My works are arranged with a simple ambiance. In particular, the walls were unified with a monotonous color to focus the audience’s attention solely on the work. Each work contains different colors, stories, and emotions. Therefore, by creating a monotonous theme, each audience can look inside themselves. My ultimate goal is to give audiences time to evoke a variety of emotional responses and focus solely on their inner self.