Sejin Kwon's latest works started with a digitally photographed image, but the artist envisioned the image getting broadcast over waves on an analogue CRT screen television. Analog televisions with the hair-raising glow of the cathode-ray tube, the halftones completely visible to the naked eye. With an academic background in oriental painting, Kwon has an appreciation for classical paintings such as Early Spring painting (早春圖) by Guo Xi (郭熙, active 11th century Song Dynasty, 960–1279) His desire to recreate CRT television screens is like the romance of classical paintings tangible in the faded silk tapestry and paper. He wanted to introduce a sincere depth of expression and time. While modern interpretations of Oriental paintings focus on the reproduction of traditional techniques or ideas, Kwon focuses on reproducing the passage of time that is so viscerally tangible in the Oriental paintings themselves.
Read MoreThe landscape paintings use ink paper on canvas, an echo of our forefathers carbon-copying mason-crafted gate names to preserve the beautiful calligraphy of the written name. To offset his observation and record-keeping of things from the past, Kwon is also quietly observing and recording life in the present. Invoking the past through classical paintings, faded photographs, and CRT television screens, the artist seems to meditate on the unavoidable truth of our present becoming the past far too quickly. The photographed scenery was present for him when the photo was taken, but as time passes, the same photo becomes an image or reproduced present. As such, it is unavoidable that image arrives after the present. The actual landscape is also no different. This present landscape did not exist in the past; nor will it exist in the future. Blue skies and clouds, golden sand that reflects light, rivers flowing through the river, sunlight shining through the glass windows, and the glow beyond the fast-running bus car windows. Revisiting that thought, it feels much more sullen.
Text courtesy GALLERY2.
