JungPyo Hong – Unique Reproduction

"What you see is what you see." - Frank Stella's legendary quote subsumed his aim to demystify painting and free it from its function of representing items with illusory means. Since the 1960ies the intention of painters has changed again. Stella's radical ideas inspired art but rarely artists would follow in his footsteps. Instead many painters rehabilitated the representational function of painting or experimented with new tools in order to extend the traditional painting to a combination of different techniques, influenced for example by Robert Rauschenberg.

Young Korean artist JungPyo Hong chose another way to define and enlarge painting tradition with a fresh approach to the balancing point between reality and illusion. Here the examination of reality is not to be found within her pictures, but in their outward appearance, in the mixing of at least two different techniques:

My current series deals with the idea of different types of execution existing in a single frame, creating balance and friction simultaneously. Mixing paint can be a very delicate exercise, demanding expert discipline. From adding an extra color, to drying on the canvas or pallet, I see limitless possibilities - and at the same time feel limited. Therefore I use a digital camera in order to suspend the process by introducing a sister medium with its own potential, and to manipulate the content for extra possibilities. – JungPyo Hong

JungPyo Hong's collage-like paintings are photographed; and every picture is a unique reproduction. The uniqueness leads the artist far away from Walter Benjamin's criticism on inflationary mass reproduction and thus the loss of aura by producing a multitude of copies from the one original work piece. JungPyo Hong seems to act on a maxim which could be: "What you see is not what you see." She refers for example to German artist Thomas Demand who reconstructs real objects out of cardboard and photographs these sceneries. The illusion is perfect; no one can tell whether she took a picture from the real world or from the cardboard installation, from her reproduction of reality.

Within the layer of my process, going from mixing paint to taking photographs, I hope to lose the beginning and the end, confuse and confound the thing in itself and the representation. I hope that this will succeed at suspending the viewers in the middle of the two processes. I will succeed if the viewer stays suspended, unable to reach the opposing endings and grasp them; yet enjoying and revelling in the suspension. – JungPyo Hong

So the artist should fix a caution label at the gallery's entrance: "What you see could confuse you!"

JUNGPYO HONG (*1984) achieved the certification by the KIDP at the Korea Institute of Design Promotion, Seoul, South Korea, in 2006. She received her BFA in Painting & Drawing from the School of the Art institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, in 2009 and her MFA in 2011. Since 2010 her works were shown is several exhibitions all over Chicago.

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