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I create conceptually driven works that intersect wide ranging artistic disciplines: sculpture, photography, drawing, video, and installation. Born and raised in Seoul, South Korea until the age of 11, the precarious straddling of the two distinctly different but equally influential cultures inevitably affect the work.

Interest in landscape began with my artist father who was adept at depicting traditional Asian landscapes with ink on paper and Western pastoral landscapes with oil paint. As a child, I was intrigued with my father’s ability to easily traverse these vastly different approaches to painting. This led me to the realization that perception and visual interpretations of landscape are subjective.

 

My work investigates what we see and experience in the world, interrogating the notion of perception’s equivalence to reality. Shaped in a bi-cultural environment, my research explores the effect of cultural and societal tendencies on both built spaces and our understanding of the natural landscape.  I am fascinated with ideas in deception and contradiction. I grapple to understand my personal stance, as society struggles with racial, social, economic inequality and ecological entropy.  Landscape is a symbolic or perhaps an escapist’s representation of these complex issues.

 

As a child, witnessing smoke plumes from errant North Korean missile shot down by South Korea over Seoul skyline was both frightening and mesmerizing.  I am in awe natural phenomenon such as hurricanes but disheartened by the trail of devastation and myopic views on global warming.  Visiting the Holt Cemetery, historical cemetery for the indigent population of New Orleans, was serenely haunting and encapsulated the still current societal inequalities.  These conflicting experiences are channeled through my landscape-allured lens to provoke awareness of both internal and external forces that influence our comprehension of the world.

 

Recently, I have been creating sculptures and site-specific installations, incorporating humble materials found in everyday environs to produce reimagined landscapes. These quotidian materials are repurposed and reconfigured to project the romantic grandeur of the landscape, simultaneously underscoring the contradictions between perception and reality.