HWANG Julie

Hwang Julie catches eternal time in a trivial everyday life. Everything could be a picture for her. Everyone and everything becomes a material and an object for her paintings through which she communicates with the world. Numerous lives in surroundings and scenes in minds are embodied in the picture which seems to speak of an ensemble of bountiful and varied life if we listen attentively.

As a painter and traveler, she says “traveling does entail a possessive nature helps me realize that experiencing a scenery through eyes is more precious than possessing a thing.” Her paintings seem to be full of the scenes touched by the eyes. Everything is in her paintings. Every scene of the world itself nestles in her paintings. “We all live with a clock in us that must be stopped someday.” This means she is cherishing every minute of her life.

Her picture shows agony of a human being who has to live in a limited life in unlimited time. The painter once mentioned that she started to be aware of death when her grandmother said “Is it possible for me to live until you enter middle school?” and then, she chose to draw a picture as a way to overcome her fear of death. “I thought it up myself to draw a picture as a way to overcome fear of death.” Drawing a picture does not free us from death. However, painting is an old habit of hers that gives a source for comfort in life, and keeps away her anxiety of limited life.

Her writing is also fairly related to death. She even wrote her will in a book of essays <The Weather is So Nice>. It reminds me of the statement of Andre Malraoux, “The reason we think of death is not to die but to live.” In this regard, the writer might have recalled painters who tragically died such as Basquiat, Haring, and Kang Yong-Dae.

“Botany,” a series from the 90s is a genre painting of the 21st century in New Painting style which is rather symbolic and metaphorical than realistic; it shows diverse aspects of a human life and the society. There seems to be noise from the city in the picture.

She said “70 percent of our life is a desert and 30 percent an oasis.” Her painting has a magnet in that the painting shows not only the isolation and grief of lonely individuals living in the cold-hearted and desolate world like a desert but also a small joy or happiness in everyday life even in that world.

The “Botany,” which has been worked for a long time as a series, let us to know at a simple glance how hard the painter works. She keeps talking about human stories of what she sees, hears, feels, thinks and imagines from her surroundings, like making flowers blooming. When looking at these pictures, the painter is considered as a physical worker. It is quite admiring to draw so various expressions, motions and figures in detail which are totally different from each other. She creates such a nice festival in a trivial everyday life through the Botany.

I remember an old visitor in the gallery saying “The painter must be physically strong.” upon the overwhelmed scale of her painting. She usually works eight hours a day, similar to that of other people; however, she fully concentrates on every minute. In fact, the concentrated time is dramatically revealed on her black and white pictures. Hwang Julie’s black and white picture, often considered as a diary, is deep and sad but generates laughters at the same time. Her black and white paintings deserve to be called a summation of the artist’s career of more than fifty years since she was five.

Almost every picture of hers depicts eyes. To see is to live for her. She opens her eyes for 24 hours, which means that she has an insight into person’s mind. Rimbaud described a poet as ”a person who sees (voyant)”, and in that regard, the painter is an innate poet.

Through her innate poetic eyes toward the world, she shows both a dark side and a bright, beautiful side of life in a balanced way.

The painter, Hwang Julie, as a traveler who goes sightseeing of numerous lives would be a model of the 21 century’s new generation concept (nomad).

She is addicted to travel and movies. Those two things have many things in common. A journey is similar to a life in that it could provide a turning point even in short time; also, a movie shows life episodes of an individual or many people in two hours. Sometimes a week-long travel or a movie leaves us with memories and impressions stronger than what an ordinary year could leave us with. It seems that there are not many places she has not been yet. The volume of the sceneries she has seen, met and touched would be ten or hundred times bigger than that of ordinary people. All those sceneries are showed in her paintings so the best way to enjoy her pictures is to take enough time to look at the work like when reading a book. She briefly expressed her deep affection for scenery in her essay book, <The Weather is So Nice>.

“When people die, something left to be desired would be scenery outside the window, not money, a house or a car; therefore, I am dreaming of an endless festival of journeys during my life seeing various sceneries.”

The writer expresses herself as a “photographer to take a photo of dream.” It probably means that the camera of her sharp eyes takes a picture of every facial expression or motion of people and moreover, the picture does not seem to disappear ever. Rather, the picture is developed in her imagination and then showed in her picture at the right time. Looking at her picture seems to let us hear the mixed sound of heaviness and lightness, bitterness and happiness, joyfulness and hardness; and the reminiscence pieces of a travel or a life seem to be floating on the water like a fine sand on the beach that was carried by the river, after being hidden in her body and mind in order to be a piece of her pictures. Unpredictable and joyful imagination and wit of the artist are shown in several spots on her picture.

If you look at her picture again and again following her stories that are at time exciting, unpredictable, and grotesque, it is not easy to choose to laugh or cry-like when we are thrown upon the last scene in the movie <25 hours>.

The highlight of Hwang Julie’s pictures, with all things taken together, is the expression of passionate love of young men and women. The camera of her keen eyes must not be able to overlook the beautiful scenery of their intense kiss, passionate hug, and ardent love.

She might find it difficult to let go of the most brightly shining moments that would never happen again in life. She captures even minute details which make the lovers’ heart palpitating and fluttering. She skillfully describes a complicated situation between lovers in the city. This is our generation’s city genre painting which is different from the Hyewon genre painting in the 18 century’s Chosun Dynasty. It is not difficult to understand that love is definitely the most humane scene full of happiness and pleasure of human beings. There also exists the other side showing the pain of broken heart and loneliness in her paintings. The writer once mentioned in an interview that love is to long for a perfect understanding for one other. Therefore, the love scene she draws is the fruit of human communication.

It is hard to see other writers like Hwang Julie who raises a communication problem quietly and seriously. She does not bluntly reveal the blocked communication but not just stand by it, either. This might be because the problem is one of the most severe sufferings everyone is facing. The blocked communication is getting intensively severe as days go by between parents and children, husbands and wives, employers and employees, which is the basic cause of our tragedy. The next expression shows what Hwang Julie is like: “The generation unable to do anything because everything is possible.”

It probably means that a real understanding seems to be impossible in the era of high-tech communication. Ionesco, an irrationality writer in France, made implications in a statement that “People are not doing a real conversation (communication) but just babbling.”

Hwang Julie is one of the talented artists and has drawn public attention since the mid-80s for New Figuration and New Painting, showing her powerful colors and the unique modern sensibility. She made the following remark a long ago in her twenties.

“I got to know a bit about my job as an artist. The art should implant the idea in people’s minds to be against the politics, economy and society which are only interested in the outcome; also, the art should proclaim peace to this irrational world, like in Charlie Chaplin’s movies where there are full of facial expressions and motions with love for human beings.”

In her forties, she wrote the following: “Drawing a picture was like sitting in a dinner table to hold the time which would be gone with the wind under my very nose. After the vanished time, here remained a stack of paintings, which makes me feel proud of myself.” These are very impressive lines. It is possibly the ultimate goal of art to grab the moment that we do not want to let go and make it last forever.

If she dreams of creating everlasting works like historical remains by drawing trivial everyday lives as an endless dropping penetrates the stone, her dream will be realized someday. Her life in the past 50 years was entirely filled with paintings since she first saw a picture for the first time at the age of 5. Even at this moment, she is beginning afresh. She is making a huge river bank, stacking the beauty and emptiness of the limited life which is brightening every moment, like making a deposit in a bank; therefore, Hwang Julie is quite an essential artist of our time who is making a road through the blocked communication era.

 <Hwang Julie, a cheerful magician who is making a road through the blocked communication era>
Kim Hyung-Soon
Arts Journalist

 

 

 

HWANG Julie
Born in 1957, Seoul, Korea

EDUCATION
1991  M.A., Studio Art, New York University
1983  M.A., Aesthetics, Hong-ik University
1980  B.F.A., Painting, Ewha Women’s University

Selected Solo Exhibition
2012  Gallery Rho. Seoul
2010  gallery Hyundai, Seoul
2008  Gallery Hyundai, Seoul
2005  Gallery Artside, Seoul
2003  Gallery Rho, Seoul
2001  Washington Square Windows Gallery, New York
2000  Sun Gallery, Seoul, Korea
1996  Sigma Gallery, New York
1996  Jean Art Gallery, Seoul, Korea
1995  Seoul Art Fair, Gallery Korea, Seoul
1994  Art Projects International, New York
1993  Sigma Gallery, New York
1992  Washington Square East Gallery, New York
1991  Art Juncion Nice, Nice, France
1990  112 Greene Gallery, New York
1989  Nishida Gallery, Nara, Japan

Selected Group Exhibition
2016 Dokdo, Island of Five Senses, Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, Seoul, Korea
2015 Korean Art in 1980s, Jeonbuk Museum of Art, Jeonju, Korea
2015 Affordable Art Fair, Dongdaemun Design Plaza, Seoul, Korea
2015 KIAF, COEX, Seoul, Korea
2015 Happy Eros & Eternity, Artside, Seoul, Korea
2014 SAMSONITE COLLABORATION, KIAF, COEX, Seoul, Korea
2013 Be My Love, Lotte Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2012 Baekseok 100th Year Anniversary Exhibition, Tong-in Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2012 Rhetoric of the Images, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
2010 Self-portraits, Seoul Museum of Art-Seosomun, Seoul, Korea
2009 Korean Modern Masters,Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, Korea
2008 20 Noticeable Korean Artists , Noam Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2007 Art in Small Size, Big Mind , Rho Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2006 NY Art Expo, Jean Gallery, Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, New York, U.S.A.