Si On

Last updated
Si On
Alma mater Mokwon University
Kyoto City University of Arts
Korean name
Hangul
박현경
Revised Romanization Bak Hyeon-gyeong
McCune–Reischauer Pak Hyŏn'gyŏng
Website hyongyon.com

Si On [1] formerly known as Hyon Gyon (born Hyun Kyoung Park, [2] June 16, 1979), is a painter who received her doctorate from the Kyoto City University of Arts. She is best known for her use of traditional Korean shamanistic imagery in her large-scale paintings. [3] Before she earned her masters and doctorate, Hyon Gyon earned her BFA from Mokwon University in Daejeon, South Korea. She now lives in Poland. [4]

Contents

Early life

Hyon Gyon [5] became involved in the world of fine arts late in life. Post-graduation, the artist moved to Japan, where she enrolled in the Kyoto City University of Arts. Gyon noted in an interview with Kyoto Art Box, "While in university, I got more interested in creating art works." [6] In an interview with Guernica Magazine, the artist described her early relationship with colorful, shiny fabrics. As a child, she drew on them and burned holes in them with a lighter. Si On's fascination with melting textiles was later reflected in the sculptural elements of her painted works, which collage textiles like satin and sateen that are melded with an iron. [7]

Si On's work engaging with shamanistic ideas and imagery began after her grandmother's death. A family member called a shaman to perform a gut ritual at their home to exorcise the remnants of her grandmother's life and recent funeral. In an interview, Gyon described her interest in purification, as well as the manifestation of negative emotions such as sadness, grief, and agony after the event, saying, "What I experienced was the process of purification of the negative emotions that accompany human tragedies, a topic I had been consistently interested in. The ritual was an endless cycle of creation and extinction in which everything—sadness, joy, anger, attachment, love, hatred, obsession with life, fear of death, desire, pain—was swallowed up. The experience had a profound effect on me as both an individual and an artist. I felt that I had at last found my subject matter." [7]

Artistic themes and imagery

Several re-occurring themes and images are visible in Hyon Gyon's shamanistic painting: [7]

Incarnations: Referred to as 'incarnations', the figures in Hyon Gyon's paintings represent metaphorical or otherworldly beings that take a temporary form. As manifestations of the intangible, the artist also relates them to the role of the shaman in gut who intercedes in a liminal space.

Hair: The artist uses hair as a signifier of life, citing it as a part of the body which continues to grow after death that was considered to hold spiritual power. The messy black hair which dominated her painting series in 2013 reflects struggle and turbulence, as the color indicates the possibility of rebirth in death.

Stigma: Hyon Gyon's interest in shamanism also lies in the social conflict around shamans. The artist has commented on her interest in the ordinary lives of shamans, who are often shunned but are called upon during climactic events, such as funerals. The artist describes the shamanistic role as providing solace through suffering, which creates empathy.

Catharsis: The artist has also referred to the catharsis she experienced after a shamanistic ceremony. Two elements that she refers to in her work are chaos, as well as the ripping apart of barriers and limitations, which are also echoed by the imagery of tearing clothing in her 'Untitled'. [8]

Selected works

Solo exhibitions

2020

2019

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

Group exhibitions

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

Public collections

Fellowships and awards

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yasumasa Morimura</span> Japanese artist

Yasumasa Morimura is a contemporary Japanese performance and appropriation artist whose work encompasses photography, film, and live performance. He is known for his reinterpretation of recognizable artworks and figures from art history, history, and mass media through his adoption of personas that transcend national, ethnic, gendered, and racial boundaries. Across his photographic and performative series, Morimura's works explore a number of interconnected themes, including: the nature of identity and its ability to undergo change, postcolonialism, authorship, and the Western view of Japan – and Asia, more broadly – as feminine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Toko Shinoda</span> Japanese artist (1913–2021)

Toko Shinoda was a Japanese artist. Shinoda is best known for her abstract sumi ink paintings and prints. Shinoda’s oeuvre was predominantly executed using the traditional means and media of East Asian calligraphy, but her resulting abstract ink paintings and prints express a nuanced visual affinity with the bold black brushstrokes of mid-century Abstract Expressionism. In the postwar New York art world, Shinoda’s works were exhibited at the prominent art galleries including the Bertha Schaefer Gallery and the Betty Parsons Gallery. Shinoda remained active all her life and in 2013, she was honored with a touring retrospective exhibition at four venues in Gifu Prefecture to celebrate her 100th birthday. Shinoda has had solo exhibitions at the Seibu Museum at Art, Tokyo in 1989, the Museum of Fine Arts, Gifu in 1992, the Singapore Art Museum in 1996, the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in 2003, the Sogo Museum of Art in 2021, the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery in 2022, and among many others. Shinoda's works are in the collection of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the Art Institute of Chicago, the British Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Harvard Art Museums, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, the Singapore Art Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the National Gallery of Victoria, and other leading museums of the world. Shinoda was also a prolific writer published more than 20 books.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matsubara Naoko</span> Japanese artist (born 1937)

Matsubara Naoko is a Japanese-Canadian artist.

Miwa Yanagi is a Japanese photographic artist who examines self-image and stereotypes of women in contemporary Japanese society. Yanagi was discovered by conceptual photographer Yasumasa Morimura, who noticed some of her work while borrowing her house as a set for a separate project.

Hugh O'Donnell is an English painter, printmaker and site-specific artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lilian May Miller</span> American artist

Lilian May Miller was an American painter, woodblock printmaker and poet born in Tokyo, Japan. In the world of art she marked her place with imagery, while she attended presentations in traditional kimonos, and signed her paintings with a monogram.

Sarah Brayer is an American artist who works in both Japan and the United States. She is internationally known for her poured washi paperworks, aquatint and woodblock prints. In 2013 Japan's Ministry of Culture awarded Sarah its Bunkacho Chokan Hyosho for dissemination of Japanese culture abroad through her creations in Echizen washi. She currently resides in Kyoto, Japan and New York, U.S.A.

Sachiko Kodama is a Japanese artist. She is best known for her artwork using ferrofluid, a dark colloidal suspension of magnetic nano-particles dispersed in solution which remains strongly magnetic in its fluid. By controlling the fluid with a magnetic field, it is formed to create complex 3-dimensional shapes as a "liquid sculpture".

Tenmyouya Hisashi is a Japanese contemporary artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Takahashi Shōtei</span> Japanese woodblock artist (1871–1945)

Takahashi Shōtei (高橋松亭), born Hiroaki was a 20th-century Japanese woodblock artist in the shinsaku-hanga and later shin-hanga art movements.

Yō Akiyama is a Japanese ceramicist based in Kyoto. He was a late leading figure of Sōdeisha, an avant-garde ceramicist group that reimagined ceramics as nonfunctional sculptural practice. Akiyama studied directly under Kazuo Yagi, one of the founders of Sōdeisha, for six years. He later became a professor at Kyoto Municipal University of Arts and Music, where he is currently a Professor Emeritus, having retired in 2018. As an artist, he works primarily with black pottery, a technique that fires clay in low temperature, smoky conditions to create a dark effect. His predominantly largescale work is richly textural and abstract, emphasizing the earthy materiality of the work as well as its form.

Jane Jin Kaisen is a visual artist and filmmaker based in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Onishi Yasuaki is a Japanese artist working in the mediums of installation, sculpture, and painting.

Shin Gallery is an encyclopedic art gallery owned by Hong Gyu Shin. It specializes in modern and contemporary art, and hosts museum-quality exhibitions. It is located on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York, and it opened in 2013. In 2014, an immersive project space was opened next to the gallery. In 2017 Shin Gallery expanded to include three different gallery spaces on Orchard Street. Then in 2020, Shin Haus get launched, a program that aims to discover up-and-coming artists. The Gallery also specializes in rediscovering overlooked artists, traditionally marginalized due to their ethnicity and gender. Shin Gallery also works with a variety of venues including national heritage sites, hotels, and public spaces further demonstrating its international agenda.

Wah Nu is a contemporary artist from Myanmar.

Keiko Masumoto is a Japanese artist from Hyogo specializing in contemporary ceramics. She attended the Kyoto City University of Arts. Masumoto’s work looks to combine both art and craft. Her preferred techniques are hand-building and throwing on the wheel.

Stella Zhang is a Chinese contemporary artist whose practice ranges from painting to sculpture and installation. Zhang is notable for her strong feminist approach in art-making. Her work is described as "a statement for women’s power and identity," Zhang is exhibited world-wide and collected by public institutions such as the National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China, Copelouzos Family Art Museum, Athens, Greece; and Tan Shin Fine Arts Museum, Tokyo, Japan. There are seven monographs focusing on her work, published by Chinese Culture Foundation of San Francisco, Si Chuan Art Press, EDGE Gallery, JKD Gallery, and Galerie du Monde. She is a guest lecturer at Stanford University and also teaches at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.

Ryoko Kimura is a Japanese contemporary artist who works in Nihonga painting. She studied at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, graduating from the oil painting course in 1995, and earning her Master's Degree in 1997. Her artwork subject matter is traditional Bijin-ga but rather than depicting women, she instead observes the male figure from the "sexual gaze from a heterosexual female standpoint." Her artwork has been exhibited in Japan, Taiwan, China, France, Germany, and USA.

Aki Inomata is a Japanese multidisciplinary contemporary artist and designer based in Tokyo. Her work addresses identity and displacement, and questions societal boundaries between humans versus animals and the natural versus man-made worlds. Much of her artistic practice aims at creating collaborative interspecies relationships through such contemporary modeling technologies as 3-D scanning and printing techniques. Inomata's cross-disciplinary Bio Art projects complicate the notion of production while proposing a new awareness of human and nonhuman ecologies, as she states: "The concept of my works is to get people to perceive the modes of life of various living creatures by experience a kind of empathy toward them."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eiji Uematsu</span> Japanese artist

Eiji Uematsu (b.1949) is a Japanese artist who is known for making earthenware ceramics and installations. Although he works in clay, Uematsu does not identify as a ceramicist. Instead, he considers his artistic practice to be a process where he playfully represents the spatial, environmental, and psychological affordances of clay. He states that “I think of myself as neither a ceramist nor an artist. Rather than expression, I feel more strongly that I want to deal with the clay. And, I hope to share what I see and feel from the clay with many people.”

References

  1. ↑ https://contemporarylynx.co.uk/everything-is-political-an-interview-with-si-on-a-korean-painter-formerly-known-as-hyon-gyon
  2. ↑ Shin Gallery. "Hyon Gyon Park" Archived 2014-01-25 at the Wayback Machine . Shin Gallery, New York, 2013. Retrieved January 23, 2014
  3. ↑ Francesca Gavin. "'Despite moments of clarity, there is no 'ism' in this book". Laurence King Pub. 2011. p. 98 - 99. ISBN   978-1-85669-734-7
  4. ↑ Allison Harding, Mami Kataoka. "Phantoms of Asia, Contemporary Awakens the Past." San Francisco. Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. 2012. p. 190–191. ISBN   978-0-939117-59-8
  5. ↑ "Hyon Gyon". artnet. 2013. March 9, 2014
  6. ↑ Kiyosawa, Satoko. "Kyoto Art Box". kyoto-artbox.jp/. Retrieved 5 March 2015.
  7. 1 2 3 Yu, Sara. "Images from an Unfathomable Place". Guernica Magazine.
  8. ↑ "Juztapoz". www.juxtapoz.com. Retrieved 5 March 2015.
  9. ↑ http://www.takahashi-collection.com/artists/en/aida-3/#/artists/en/hyon-gyon-3/. “Hyon Gyon.” Takahashi Collection. 2008. March 9, 2014
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.