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The Essence is Invisible
Bong Chae Son2009
Korean Art Museum Association
Seoul, South Korea
Details
- Title: The Essence is Invisible
- Creator: Son, Bong Chae
- Creator Lifespan: 1967
- Creator Nationality: Korean
- Creator Birth Place: Gwangju, Korea
- Date Created: 2009
- Physical Dimensions: w840 x h1240 cm
- Type: Painting
- Medium: Oil on polycarbonate LED
- Korean Artist Project: Son, Bong Chae is one of 21 outstanding artists selected by the Korean Artist Project. The Korean Artist Project is a global online website which aims to promote Korean contemporary artists hosted by the Ministy of Culture, Sports, and Tourism of Korea and organized by the Korean Art Museum Association. KAP has launched with a three-year plan spanning from 2011 to 2013. At the first step in 2011, art professionals and critics selected 21 artists, and curators from 13 private art museums organized their virtual solo exhibitions. KAP would love to introduce a diverse spectrum of Korean contemporary art to the global audience. Through these efforts, KAP will play a significant role in the promotion and development of Korean contemporary art. Also, the KAP will become a useful platform, which will serve as a stepping-stone to create cultural exchange and global networks with diverse art people. Please visit www.koreanartistproject.com
- Critic's Note: Bong Chae Son’s art is incomplete without the crucial component of spectator participation. But rather than leading spectators to participate through action, his work is completed only when a spectator’s participatory curiosity achieves satisfaction through a narrative journey on the stepping stones of consciousness laid by the artist. The works of artist Son are somehow part sculpture, part installation, part performance, and complex; yet they are also heavily dependent on the direct and indirect participation of spectators. In other words, his art is incomplete without the crucial component of spectator participation. But rather than leading spectators to participate through action, his work is completed only when a spectator’s participatory curiosity achieves satisfaction through a narrative journey on the stepping stones of consciousness laid by the artist. This is due to the aesthetic stories he wishes to discuss being in most cases social and historical and themselves the large and small realities that surround life. It is also because the materials that constitute these stones are intensely honest as well as loaded with similes. The label attached to Son’s art is made obvious in the materials he selects for his art. Until now, his aesthetic tools have consisted of two materials. One is bicycles; the other is panel paintings, images drawn on layers of polycarbonate and then superimposed. This is why he has become better known as ‘the bicycle artist’ than as ‘the artist Son'. The language of his art utilizes these two materials to relate a variety of stories, including some from the artist’s personal life as well as sociopolitical accounts from the turbulent history of both Korea and the wider world. The plots of these stories are either highly sensitive to literature or they overflow with a sensitivity that emerges from a cultivation of literature. They are soaked, lingering affection and sympathy made all the more visible through exaggeration, reduction and other forms of expression, in the quiet visual language found deep inside these expressions. (This is an excerpt from an original text.)
- Artist's Education: Chosun University. Gwangju, Korea. B.F.A., Painting.Pratt Institute. NY, USA. M.F.A.
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