2021. 12. 10 – 2022. 1. 6
Kwon Jian

“Artist Kwon Ji-an’s work is like laundry of the mind, liberating the mind and illuminating the darkness,” said poet Na Tae-joo, who came all the way from Gongju to Jangheung to see the artist’s work. Since Kwon’s first solo exhibition in 2012, her fiery passion experienced hectic times with countless honors and scars. There are mysterious rules in her instability, and her atypical preference for feeling anxious about stability, uncalculated honesty, and extraordinary sensitivity have magnet-like attractions. Artist Kwon Ji-an has a charm that makes you fall in love with her because of her unique energy.

Kwon likes the raw vitality of candle wax flowing, changing, piling up, and merging. As she projects herself into such raw changes and flows, she reveals her own new breath. New works are created for this moment of life that will never come again. Although her < Cake > series, which was inspired by clay art while playing with her nephew, was accused of plagiarizing artist Jeff Koons, artists around the world started to take interest in her. These events ultimately returned to Kwon Ji-an in the form of the word ‘hope.’ Everyone has a mechanism to escape from a crisis, but she has the power to change the world’s cynical energy into positive energy. The < Just a Cake > series shows how the pain swallowed inward becomes sweet and becomes a variation of new energy. She said, “I endured because I wanted to live, but as I endured and persevered, a gift came to me.” She continues, “The wounded cake shows my past and present, but I hope that the candle of hope lit in it will be a light of hope for modern people living in a difficult world.”

Her work, where the two egos of Solbi and Kwon Ji-an meet, poetry and space meet, music meets the canvas, 3D structures meet a plane, performance is revealed on a flat surface, and the moments of time and pause meet as candle wax flows, is not a single form. Rather, it is a combination of points of contact, the meeting of boundaries and boundaries. The work of Kwon Ji-an, who paints to protect herself, is an act of catharsis released through various styles such as painting, sculpture, installation, performance, and body painting, and represents the appearance of modern people in social networks.

This exhibition shows the artist’s < Just a Cake – Piece of Hope > and < Humming > series, which are symbolic of her work.

The cake series, which contains gifts, festivals, and messages of hope, has a message of hope for us who are worn out by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. This message communicates that we endured this difficult period, and now it’s time to welcome a new era of festivals with new hope. “I like the word ‘courage.’ I’m afraid at every moment, but I try to find the tools for courage. I believe that I will be healed if I confront everything head-on and work without being afraid of getting hurt.”

The < Humming > series, which was described by poet Na Tae-joo as “heavenly letters” and art critic Ahn Hyun-jung as “sound art,” is a visual outcome of extreme sadness that cannot be expressed by any words or songs after the artist’s loss of her father. It is a song that meets one’s deepest inner self at the intersection of language before language, music before music, and despair and life.

gallery NoW
16, Eonju-ro 152-gil, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, Korea
+82 2 725 2930

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