The works of Chulwon Kwak display a familiar but strange landscape. the landscape of desert are very hazy and they have the boundless meanings matching with aesthetic colors and compositions, which lead us to a dreamlike world. One can feel familiar in the works, but the reality is different.

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The twofold landscape is huge and dart but romantic, which is hugely characterized with shadows of ivy leaves decorating the desert. The ivy leaves being as a cool breeze cover the world of the reality and the surrealistic, the boundary of consciousness and unconsciousness, and the philosophy of the west and the east and they derive reasons from the neutral point of them in the work, like the space of oriental paintings.

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 The concept of self and ego and collective unconscious mainly consist of the idea of Carl Gustav Jung, are the main theme that the artist has explored for a long time. The artist strives to find what the source of human spirit prisoned in a dream and who I am. Therefore, you can see his calm inner space looking back the shadows prisoned in persona. His works take a contemplative third person view point but they overlap the aspects of the ultimate human anguish as if the materials of his work followed it.

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 The work creates familiar, comfortable, decorating scenes by arranging letters and borrowing the experimental, sequential pictures of Eadweard Muybridge, 19th century photographer. Therefore, you can draw various interpretations from the old imagines. Letters and the pictures of Eadweard Muybridge were drastic and innovative materials at the time. His works recover the materials and advance the materials into aesthetic, mature and subliminal images. The experimental spirit covering the 19th century science and art is an external theme in his work world. His work borrowing images is a breakthrough in art history and corrected the errors on the visible limits of our eyes. In addition, his work ultimately tries to unfold the world of wonders that can go beyond the limits of our eyes.

 

■ SungEun Kim Art Critic