HYUK KWON

I was born in the US and went back to Korea when I was 3 years old. There, I majored in architecture as an undergraduate and after that I worked as a freelance designer and artist. Currently attending school in New York and majoring in fine arts.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My sculptures and installation works exploring materiality and space contain a spirit of rebellion and contemplation of social phenomena. In my work, the social meaning and use of the original object disappears, and sometimes the object's materiality that we commonly know is replaced with a completely different property. This 'Defamiliarization’, in which scenes we commonly know are distorted, slows down the reading and understanding of the viewers who witness the scene and creates a blank space for thinking. And then, the viewer soon becomes aware of the artistic process or artistic device hidden in the distortion. In the blank space created in this way, I try to bring out and reflect new possibilities or stories inherent in social objects that we encounter every day, or provide an opportunity to reflect on the social problems hidden behind them. Within that blank space, I try to bring out new possibilities or stories inherent in the social objects we encounter every day, or provide an opportunity to contemplate the social phenomena hidden behind them.

 ​​As an example of the relationship between wood and paper, which I am exploring in my recent work, the fragile toilet paper born from tree returns to the shape of a huge and hard-looking tree in my studio, or the sharp and hard properties of a saw used to cut trees paradoxically translate into the soft properties of paper. Within each work, the circulation of tree and paper products and their physical properties are transformed, collided with, or reversed. Also,this relationship goes beyond the story of wood and paper, and suggests metaphorically and poetically the relationship between modern society and its constituent elements, including humans.