Artist Hong Jeong-hee holds individual exhibition

South Korean artist Hong Jeong-hee will hold an exhibition at the 2GIL29 Gallery in Seoul until next Saturday. Hong started her professional career as an artist after she graduated from Seoul National University College of Fine Arts and got her work selected for an art exhibition in 1967. In 1979, she flew to the University of Michigan as a Fulbright visiting scholar to spend a year doing research. She studied color, thinking of the Korean traditional clothes and multicolored paintwork on wooden buildings, and made bold attempts such as using ground sawdust, coffee, and fish bones as materials.

The latest exhibition is her first personal exhibition in five years since the last one held in 2014 at Seoul National University Museum of Art. Visitors can take a look at the new pieces of the “Nano” series she has worked on. Hong had presented the “Ego-Korean” series in the mid-1970s, the “Leaving Ego” series in the 1980s, and the “Passion” series in the 1990s. In the “Nano” series, which was started in 2005, she tried to express tiny aggregates with vitality.

The South Korean artist has elaborated that the pieces reflect neither a specific object nor a certain scene. They rather focus on the colors themselves. This approach seems to be related to minimalism, an aesthetic movement originating in the United States in the 1960s.

“Hong has presented her works overseas on numerous occasions including the 1983 Sao Paulo Art Biennale, and won prizes such as the 7th Suk Ju Art Prize, the Special Prize of the art exhibition hosted by the Hankook Ilbo, the Minister Prize of the 20th National Art Exhibition of the Republic of Korea,” said Baek Un-a, the representative of the 2GIL29 Gallery. “Pieces under the Nano series are about the order of people’s awareness of the future, and show simpler, more minimal forms than the previous color schemes.”


Min Kim kimmin@donga.com