London Korean Links

Covering things Korean in London and beyond since 2006

Shin Kiwoun & Wang Ziwon at sketch London

Sketch seems to be turning into a regular alternative venue for Korean art. Hot on the heels of Yun Sungfeel’s show there comes another one from Hanmi Gallery artists:

Shin Kiwoun & Ziwon Wang

sketch, 9 Conduit Street, W1S 2XG
14 April to 29 June, 8am – 2pm

Hanmi Gallery is delighted to announce the forthcoming exhibition of works by artists Shin Kiwoun and Ziwon Wang at sketch.

Shin Kiwoun

Shin Kiwoun: Ultra Man (2006)
Shin Kiwoun: Ultra Man (2006)

New media artist, Shin Kiwoun’s works explore and intersect notions of time, existence, reality and illusion. Shin’s works concern themselves primarily with questioning our own interpretations of these terms. In this series of video works, the artist grinds down desirable commodities and even monetary currency to dust, a process that simultaneously terminates their economic value and levels all objects to an equal status. These modern commodities and objects somehow represent authorities and powers in our society. The artist designed various grinding machines to terminate these objects and filmed the process of crushing them. The expensive goods are transformed into dust and thus lose their value and power and become nothing.

Shin Kiwoun was awarded the JoongAng Fine Art Prize (2007) and selected for the Bloomberg New Contemporaries Prize (2010). His work
has been exhibited worldwide including at the Liverpool Biennale (UK), ZKM (Germany), Marugame Genichiro Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art (Japan), and the 5th Seoul International Media Art Biennale, Seoul Museum of Art (Korea). Shin’s works are held in international collections including Korea National Film Archive (Korea) and Obayashi Collection (Japan).

Shin Kiwoun has an MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, London 2010 and received BFA, MFA in Sculpture at Seoul National University of Arts, Seoul, South Korea.

Ziwon Wang

Wang Ziwon: Mechanical Buddhahood, 2014
Wang Ziwon: Mechanical Buddhahood, 2014. Urethane, metallic materials, machinery, electronic device, 58 x 25 x 45cm.

Ziwon Wang’s cybernetic sculptures address the increasingly fused relationship between man and technology. The human features and limbs of Wang’s ‘post-human’ sculptures hold serene and meditative expressions and positions that are then juxtaposed against the disjointed mechanical components. Despite their evident machinery however, the pieces retain an element of quiet humanity, and appear to live and breathe with movement.

At the core of Wang’s work is the question of decision-making – the emotive human decisions against the coded and systematic judgments made by machines. The works are concerned with the status of human thought, and how it might transgress or progress with the future of technology. The manifestation of this interest in the passage of time can be found in the poses of the human figures, that call to mind images of the Buddha, and other religious figures, in a way that seems to question whether advancement of machinery and technology has changed the fundamental elements of human life.

The characteristic face of the figures that is repeated throughout, and referred to rather ominously as ‘Z’, is in fact a self-portrait. The combinations of these very human features, and the machinery, as well as making an interesting juxtaposition, are also derived from the three stages of cybernetics. Wang is particularly interested in the stage of the cyborg, robots being able to take on roles in the human body, such as artificial limbs. Wang is therefore challenging the perception that the moral, unique, and individualized nature of humans is being lost with the advancement of artificial intelligence.

Ziwon Wang graduated from Chungan University in Seoul, Korea with BA and MA in Sculpture in 2007. He was awarded the Song Eun Award in 2010 and selected for The National Art Studio residency programme 2011 in Korea. Wang’s works is held in many public collections such as the Seoul City Museum of Art and Incheon City’s Department of Finance, as well as co-operate institutions as Art Bank Korea and Kolon Tower. Wang has exhibited in New York, Tokyo, Mumbai, Beijing, Hong Kong and Amsterdam.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.