A choice of current work by Brooklyn-based artist Sung Hwa Kim. Born in Seoul, Kim acquired a BFA from Artwork Institute of Boston in 2008, and an MFA from Maryland Institute School of Artwork in 2012. His work explores the passage of time by way of the lens of the normal Korean white porcelain jar, a vessel that capabilities as an emblem of cyclical transitions and existential reflection.
“I invite viewers to ponder the delicate steadiness between what fades and what endures. I strategy this exploration as one may write a haiku: capturing fleeting, poetic moments of change which might be each deeply private and universally shared. The colours I take advantage of are deliberately evocative, marking shifts from city to pastoral, from day to nighttime, from life to demise. By these colours, I craft a panorama the place contrasting forces converge: nature’s serenity meets the heartbeat of town, and moments of stillness are interrupted by the vibrancy of transformation. Every portray is a snapshot of time, but frozen in a dreamlike stillness, as if suspended within the delicate limbo between opposing forces.”
Guiding the viewer throughout the edge between what’s ephemeral and what stays, Kim presents fragmented worlds in fleeting concord. His work is an invite to replicate on the intersecting realities that form our existence, each on earth and within the huge cosmos. For Kim, collisions of time, place, and emotion encourage a meditative journey, one which reveals the fragile webs that bind the tangible and the transcendent.
