Hoopla 2003 _ White Wall Gallery_ Seoul

Hoopla: originally used at a circus when a performer jumped through a hoop; great activity, excitement or disturbance; a celebration. Bertolt Brecht used it in “The Three penny Opera” as a dare, an invitation, a wink of the lips.

“The music is playing
The dance has begun
Come to the masquerade”

Looking at paintings in a studio or a gallery is not looking in a mirror or reading Proust. If the artist is any good, and Sooyeon Hong is that and more, then we gaze at the unexpected and it seems fortuitous and inevitable. 

The allure of Sooyeon Hong’s work lies in the tentative sensation created by images that are serene yet incessantly in motion. While an image appears condensed at one moment, there is a feeling that its silhouette might shift at any second. This is precisely why one nods in agreement with the series title, "Still Cuts."

On a surface, only a membrane (粘膜) can form a geological stratum. Those ambiguous, translucent, and colored membranes are not something that can be crafted by the clumsy fingertips of a human. They are images of coincidence born from the force of gravity. Of course, the artist creates forms and profiles under thorough calculation and intent. In the process of creating an image by tilting a canvas layered with fluid paint, causality and chance, intention and spontaneity are concisely intertwined. The unstable outlines created by color layers—each with differing amounts of paint, viscosity, density, and transparency—evoke color shadows flickering upon the surface of water. Yet, even within those thin color layers, there is a thickness of time and a movement that scatters endlessly in all directions.