Beauty and the bojagi: The art of Wonju Seo
“To me, ‘travelogue’ refers to a system of visualizing digital landscapes and character, using textiles as summary art.” ~ Wonju Search engine marketing
The Pacific Northwest has a lively background and movement in textile/paper art and production – a fantastic portion coming from artists of Korean descent. Like Jiyoung Chung, Youngmin Lee and Bella Yongok Kim, modern artists are gracing the artistic landscape with exceptionally intricate is effective of exceptional fashion and scope. Even La Conner’s Pacific Northwest Quilt & Fiber Arts Museum presently has an exhibition showcasing the ideal in Modern day Korean Quilts by up and coming artisans of the craft.
At The Korea Culture in New York Town, the recent clearly show, entitled Wonju Search engine optimization: Travelogue, the Korean-born artist Wonju Web optimization goes to the coronary heart of her creations as perfectly: a myriad of exact procedures and disciplines formed to bring the viewer into a planet not viewed before – one particular of varieties, shapes and cultural perceptions. In displaying how artwork can be more than representational, the artist shows us that it can also be as summary as it can be emotionally insightful as properly.
Born and raised in Seoul, Korea, Seo made an desire in artwork early on she enrolled at Hong-Ik University in Seoul, popularly regarded for its baccalaureate courses in Artwork and Architecture. On finishing her instruction, she left the school to pursue perform as a designer and professional silk painting artist. Close to 1998, she relocated to the United States to continue her vocation as a comprehensive-time artist. In this article she moved her creative way more towards a geometric form of summary artwork.
Utilizing the historic kind of Korean textile method termed Bojagi (“wrapping cloth”), the artist results in a distinct amalgamation of the classic and the modern. As she would say, “My lifetime as a teen in the patriarchal modern society, and my present life in the western earth all have grow to be the qualifications for my creative action.”
Organic and natural, daring and vivid, the function of Wonju Website positioning can be viewed as experimental, summary or continuous, relying on one’s personal interpretation – even so, it is absolutely a satisfaction to bestow on the eyes of the conscious viewer. Upon moving into the organization’s Party Place, Wrapped with Blessings, 2018, is found as wrapped packing containers intricately layered with embroidered silk textiles, expressively proven in colours of pinkish reds to dark greys – easily reminding one particular of designs commonly viewed on circus costumes, in particular that of the Harlequin, the comedian servant character from the Italian commedia dell’arte.
Seo’s link with Korean custom and neighborhood has often been vital to her her childhood upbringing in Korea and learning the history of gals and textile creation, the artist designed these items with that inventive inspiration in head. Meticulously doing the job by hand and bringing to her a entire knowing of the method, the expertise created it all the far more very important for her when it arrived time to develop art on a complete-scale foundation
The perform, titled Up to date Silk Bojagi, 2020, provides such depth-oriented and laborious precision, as if commencing from the center of the space and performing outwards, like a Piet Mondrian painting blooming to total exercise. As just one observes incredibly intently into each of these textile “squares”, one can see the intricate nonetheless uncommon designs, colours and styles that would serve as inspiration and continuation to her wide system of operate.
Featured in the Gallery part, By way of My Window: Ocean, Sky and Wind, 2021 is the two fascinating and thoughts boggling in viewing this surprise to start with hand. Meticulously completed with alcohol ink, paper, Korean silk and images, it begins with stable panels of rectangular designs, moving inward and outward with blotches of shades: green, blue, and pink. Algae-like in its visual appeal, the hues melds with the shapes: summary nevertheless linear, the blotches and smears builds up optically, creating shades of transparency and mild – like searching via a number of windows into the beyond, constantly expanding with every single motion, turning into otherworldly and very expressive.
Revolutionary creations, like her “Map Drawing” series (cotton thread function) and “White Wonderland” (origami silk squares), keep their have similarly as effectively – with the same skill, procedure and commitment as the other performs revealed all over the two exhibiting spaces.
In essence, Wonju Seo’s do the job demonstrates the value of how a condition can come to be a lot more than just a form that it can take variety and effort and hard work into spots past what the eye can see and what the hand can produce. Her exceptional do the job impels the viewer toward a overall and full state of understanding, of viewing and of feeling – a acutely aware roadmap toward a tradition, a direction and a cultural identification.
The exhibition will be on screen until May possibly 27th. The Korea Culture is situated on 350 Madison Avenue in New York City.