In Previous Lives, Seonna Hong excavates the way in which experiences appear to stack upon one another, generally slipping by way of or re-emerging once we don’t anticipate them. By her signature summary vistas, Hong creates what could be referred to as “memory landscapes,” huge scenes that layer themes of environmental destruction, private reflections, and the artist’s personal Korean heritage.
On view at Saint Mary’s School Museum of Artwork, Previous Lives includes 32 works, lots of which have been altered from their unique type. For instance, the Los Angeles-based artist revised “The Loved Ones” by softening the perimeters of cumbersome, striped blocks within the background and anonymizing a pair of younger women whereas giving their figures extra readability. “Selective Abstraction” is analogous and incorporates a bolder streak of vivid pink throughout the canvas, a recurring mark in Hong’s newest works.
The exhibition title comes from Celine Tune’s 2023 movie structured round inyeon, an historic idea of fated love that emerges in a single life after one other. Hong provides:
I’ve included items that present my previous lives in addition to older works that, within the spirit of re-use, repurpose, and upcycling, have been painted into and introduced from the previous into the current, being aware to not simply gesso over the canvas (a literal and metaphorical whitewash) however embrace a few of its historical past, the layers.
With barren bushes, colourful mounds, and diminutive figures ambling among the many terrain, the work emphasize the methods the previous emerges within the current. Regardless of their vivid hues, Hong’s landscapes are deteriorating and experiencing the very actual blight of local weather catastrophe. Two new items depict figures within the parched Atacama desert, clambering atop huge heaps of discarded clothes. Bringing the immense waste of quick style and consumerism to the fore, the compositions seize the methods our choices are by no means relegated to the previous and the way our decisions have an effect on even probably the most sparsely populated areas on the planet.
As with earlier our bodies of labor, Hong’s Korean ancestry seems, as nicely. A big, upright bear shifts its weight to 1 facet in “More Bridges Less Walls.” The animal performs an vital function in a Korean creation delusion, which says that the highly effective, devoted mammal was changed into a lady who went on to begin the nation.
Previous Lives is on view by way of June 22 in Moraga, California. Discover extra from Hong on Instagram.
