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Hong Sungchul: Solid but Fluid, at HADA Contemporary

News of HADA Contemporary’s July show:

Hong Sungchul: Solid But Fluid

HADA CONTEMPORARY | 21 VYNER STREET
5 – 25 JULY 2012

OPENING RECEPTION 5 JULY 2012 6:00-9:00pm

Hong Sungchul

HADA Contemporary is proud to present the first UK solo exhibition of the critically acclaimed South Korean artist, Hong Sungchul.

The artist has developed a wide-ranging body of work in various media incorporating modern technology: interactive video projections, performances, sculptures and installations. This exhibition brings together Hong’s most recent works from an ongoing investigation of the ontological anxiety inherent in our contemporary lives.

The focal point of Hong’s oeuvre is the tension originating from the ontological incompleteness inevitable in our lives. However, as in yin yang of Asian philosophy, the destructive force derived from this tension and anxiety creates a complementary impetus in life. His most widely known String series consists of images printed on elastic strings most commonly depicting human body parts – mainly hands. Hong believes that the hands rather than the eyes forge a gateway to our relationship with the outer world, ultimately symbolising the essence of each individual human being. Evocative of Michelangelo’s ‘The Creation of Adam’, his paintings portray the struggle against isolation, its ensuing pain and the constant existential search for the meaning of being. Endlessly tangled beads and threads firmly seized by the anonymous hands is perhaps the artist’s yearning, prayer or will to search for the meaning of life, in the midst of a digital culture that perpetuates the triumph of the image over substance and banishes real human engagement to the fringes of social interaction.

The individual strings are printed upon and placed in regular intervals to create an optical illusion further developing the concept touched upon by both Optical and Kinetic Art alluring the viewers to interact and perceive. Merleau-Ponty notes that:

“Experience is not arrayed before me as if I were God, it is lived by me from a certain point of view; I am not the spectator, I am involved, and it is my involvement in a point of view which makes possible both the finiteness of my perception and its opening out upon the complete world as a horizon of every perception.”

Hong seduces audiences to build sensorial and physical relationships with the artworks encouraging individual perceptual cognitive process, allowing the viewers to form their own reality from their own unique experience. Thus, the hands in the painting become your hands, my hands and Adam’s hands, as they were first touched by God.
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Hong Sungchul (b. 1969) lives and works in Seoul, South Korea. He received M.F.A in Integrated Media at California Institute of the Arts and M.F.A and B.F.A in Sculpture at Hongik University, Seoul. His works has been exhibited at international galleries including Saatchi Gallery London, Galerie Orem Paris, Erhard Witzel Gallery Wiesbaden, Gwacheon National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul Museum of Art, Youngeun Museum of Contemporary Art, Art Seasons Gallery Beijing among others.

OPENING HOURS
Wednesday – Friday : 11am to 6pm
Saturday – Sunday : 11am to 4pm
or by appointment

HADA CONTEMPORARY | Vyner Street
21 Vyner Street
London E2 9DG
Tel. +44 (0)7912 417 629
[email protected]
www.hadacontemporary.com

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