The Journey of Water drawn from The Sea In the city of water, all kinds of thoughts transform into energy, draw water, then the screen cast over with charcoal. The title of Hyuk Kwon’s solo exhibition held in 16 bungee is “Journey”. She drew the journey of water while staying for a few months in Venice to participate in the Residency Program (2007). Getting with water every day, she has a special interesting experience regarding the existence and significance of water. In particular, boats that pass over the water came to her as an image just like the roads of our city with passenger vehicles and buses, transporting garbage and so forth. The daily images made the artist with fresh one, and while she was drawing water, they came into her view, into her being deep thoughts, and in the end, these thoughts appear in the form of energy whose flow turns water into humans, animals, mountains, and wind. The artist witnesses the very moment when she realizes that humans, animals, mountains, and wind exist not as an individual being but as a whole thing. Let us assume that 4.5 billion years ago when the Earth was first created, water drops formed around dust particles and this was the origin of today’s sea (water). Water, stuck around more than dozen trillion dust particles that shape the Earth, can be regarded as the starting point of Hyuk Kwon’s creation. This point is one of the many holes (points) that thread is stitching into, and these points, in the process of being connected and linked, seek their own journey. Thread that stitches the holes maintains both coincidental and inevitable relationship. The artist’s has been worked stitch works for the past 10 years including letters, geometrical image etc. This time she transform her stitching work more matured the landscape of water in that the stitch was done alternating single colors and multi colors. As it is no easy task to draw wave with a brush, it is difficult for a usual artist to imagine drawing wave in stitches. The needle becomes the brush, and colorful threads become the palette to paint freely and rapidly. Thread is a medium that is essential in understanding the artist’s work. By using thread, the artist goes beyond the conventional concept of general technique used for practical and decorative purposes to represent work with symbol and metaphor of the invisible form. Having carried out projects called “Moving Project”, “Nanada Project” that had been the artist’s main form of work ever since 2005, she has put aside her work pursuing conceptuality and publicity and shows more sensible and emotional language. In this regard the artist, who is at the peak with nothing to fear and to hesitate about, is maybe doing works that touch the most primitive feeling, answering to the fundamental question of energy that she has long dreamed of, rather than pursuing art that is being done within the institutional space. The thought of the artist who wanted to embody the flow of energy in the picture that at first seemed unfamiliar…the moment Kwon changed the way she understood things, she gave free rein to her imagination as if journeying on the waters. Humans and animals are the traces of the artist that connect with water and wind, and the boat is placed on this border, without the artist’s knowing. The boat remains unseen, but soon again comes to another place, observes, then leads the water to somewhere at the end of the border. Then it is divided into two, causes a wave, and then disappears, and then once again is divided into many, thereby dispersing viewpoints. In fact, it varies according to different viewpoints. That is, it plays the role of converging or expanding different viewpoints by connecting the borders of the waters, the sea that the artist had been unaware of. From the 1st viewpoint to the 2nd expanding to the 3rd…and when crossing over the boundary it transcends all time and space. In screen, the artist attempts the course towards multi-point going beyond the vanishing point and perspective from an Energyscape point of view and represents the possibility of change. It is hard to take a theoretical approach on the Energyscape. In between human beings, all matters and seven feelings are all mixed, therefore hopefully the existence of an invisible energy will be perceived in this relationship. The artist’s trace, derived from the experience of thinking, begins as an observer of invisible energy, then functions as an assistant in controlling and coordinating space and object. Kwon continues to draw the changing landscape with time and space and will now face the move towards the intuitive world where the body changes its constitution to go for a stroll, experience and remember. The artist seems to have felt the gap of our busy and hectic contemporary life while looking at the Venetian waters. Points that are ephemeral (compared to water) immediately converge and disperse, singing the transience of life, whereas the artistic eyes emphasizing life is metaphor to that sea. Now marks the beginning. If the points are used to dismantle the borders of the world, hopefully, the aggressively daring energy is displayed to the fullest. “Energyscape” is the flare being fired. Kwan Hoon Lee (Curator, Project Space Sarubia)