Empathy: Sharing the ¡°sense¡± of a word.

Suim Jang has shown a consistent interest in letters. She has attempted various artistic approaches with the same material, and through this exhibition, she is going to try to empathize with others the joys that ordinary words bring to daily life. Just like the literal meaning of ¡®everyday life¡¯, ubiquitous and nondescript letters and any associated landscapes will be the theme. Consciously or unconsciously, words that are processed through our perspectives acquire subjective meanings in the process. The result is that such words define our views and behaviors, engender diverse reactions and phenomena, and create the aesthetics of our daily lives. The words in public places, cultures implicit in the words, and the invisible mutual interactions between such words and the public are manifestations of the desire to communicate with empathy.

The biggest feature of the work is that there is a simultaneous operation of the words¡¯ function of meaning and art¡¯s function of expression. In truth, paintings have been considered separate entities from language, only dealing with visible objects. Only after the early twentieth century did paintings reflect characters, and the artist would like to point out that it is the invisible mutual interaction between characters and daily phenomena instead of the abstract concepts associated with the shapes of characters that provides significance in the context of modern art.

The basis for the art work is a picture that delineates the landscapes around the words. The changes of the environment that familiar words such as ¡°sale¡± or ¡°special¡± engender are observed and used as the basis for structuring the complete work. In order to produce the desired conditions, she collects the photos, disassembles them, and combines them together to reconstruct the image. It is a familiar and intimate endeavor that everyone probably tried at least once. The artist recognizes images of photos as the materials for the artwork and focuses on presentations using precise lines. The central word in the work is highlighted, and the fact that the focus of the work is the detailed illustration of the behaviors and circumstances derived from the word is very apparent. The words that appear in the work scatter and float on the surface instead of forming a structured sentence. Just like solving a riddle, the words and the actions of the characters serve as clues for the audience to deduce a beautiful story.

The artist constructs her own modeling language by combining features of paper into the work. The function of the paper further expands from a simple recording medium into its own right as a medium of expression. The artist utilizes the plasticity of the paper to achieve the planned shape of the canvas while incorporating the natural shrinkage and expansion that the papers experience during the drying process. Such a medium serves as an artwork itself by encompassing both two and three dimensional configuration, as well as a unique canvas for the artist. The diverse aspects of the simulated indeterminate form and the unrefined texture approach the audience as both imperfect and natural. In such an artwork, the paper plays a role of representing a flexible form of expression that delicately uncovers the everyday life rather than merely serving as a simple drawing medium.

The artist carefully observes the expressive function of the letter and the associated subsequent changes to everyday life. Because letters are established signs of social and cultural values for the purpose of mutual communication, it could serve as another window through which we can see our own daily life. The artist thinks, perceives, and expresses the letters in such a way to expand the sensory range through which the elusive joys of the words could become accessible. Through this exhibition, we would like you to empathize with the aesthetics of everyday life as she presents them in her own delicate way.