Venue: Song Eun Art Space

Chapter 3
Mine, Yours, and Ours: Borders, Territories, and Unions

Donghyun Son is an oriental painter by practice and has produced experimental work reinterpreting subjects appearing in modern popular culture as works of East Asian art, using traditional trends, techniques, methods, and distinctive qualities of mediums that are well known and have long been given much weight over East Asian painting history. From his very first solo exhibition Pop-Icon:波狎芽益混 (2006) Son has reproduced popular fictional characters that appear in animation or Hollywood movies using East Asian brush painting techniques. Taking from the values of Transmitting Spirit (傳神寫照) – that believes in capturing a subject’s virtuous and distinguished character and spirit along with his or her physical appearance when creating a portrait – Son paradoxically depicts nonexistent fictional characters so that we may see them, as a way of questioning the traditional subject matter and approach styles to reconstitute them into the perspectives of today. Furthermore, through his serial works Portrait of King (2008), that portray the changing facial appearances and style through time of late pop-star Michael Jackson seated atop the traditional Korean royal throne, and Villain (2011), that introduces major villains of the famous 007 James Bond film series released between the years 1962 and 2002, Son earnestly and meticulously analyzes the value system and trends of popular culture that adjust with the shift of time, using this traditional medium.

Son’s recent solo exhibitions Pine Tree (2014, SPACE WILLING N DEALING) and Ink on Paper (2015, Gallery 2) marked a turning point for his work, which has long been about experimenting with the fusing of contemporary pop-culture characters with traditional painting formats. If his earlier works have characters of pop-culture play the leading roles of the portrait to dictate the overall work, his post-2014 works incorporate traditional elements – that have long been the focus of East Asian painting history, such as a pine tree, or the landscape-figure or letter relationships – into personality traits or qualities of the figure he attempts to personify in a figure painting. On a superficial level, these figures – depicted with the faces of leading actors and actresses of Chinese-speaking cultures and with poses and gestures that seem to be straight out of a superhero or martial arts comic book – appear as though they are still being read within the framework of popular culture, but in truth they are fictional “hyeupgaeks” or chivalrous warriors – that differ in meaning from those pre-2014 works – created by Son based on major themes, techniques, and elements present in East Asian painting as well as characteristics of commonly used materials. In this exhibition titled Jasmine Dragon Phoenix Pearl, Son dissects the East Asian painting method and introduces his own entertaining process of the last two or three years through 28 new works.

+http://songeunartspace.org/programs/user/space/space_en_start.asp