Junwoo

Apple

Watercolor on paper

In today’s time, the significance of the apple has fallen to the ground with “Apple Inc.” overpricing their products. The painting aims to criticise this situation by putting a bitten apple on the back that has a disgusting mouth, portraying the dark reality that the company is “consuming the consumers”. The falling apple on the front refers to the first apple logo that refers to the founding of gravity, to illustrate that the once highly valued apples have come to a fall.

Into the Dimensions

Photography

The colour scraps of plastic lying on my table reminded me of abstract paintings, especially Piet Mondrian‘s work. The rectangular layers overlapped on each other, forming a sort of 3-dimensional effect and adding a new rhythm to the audience in this overall flat painting. With the Gundam, an unreal object in the centre, this painting overcomes the 2-dimensional limit it has and guides the viewer into its own, new dimension, hence the name.

Indoctrination

Acrylic on paper

The artwork shows my praise to the school. The hand holding the tower is to add an idea of a student raising a hand. With the boat charging electricity onto the tower it lighting up, a visual interpretation of the school powering the “lightbulbs” in the student’s heads. BING! The videos in the background represent the “phenomenal” possibilities that the students can make in the future. The man in the tower represents the dance of joy due to the life lessons learnt at school.

Other Angle

To the Top

Honeycomb board, grass on styrofoam

During the journey of an arduous task, most people are focused on the very end, and become lost and are not present in the very process and journey itself. I wanted to highlight this idea with an animation of a climbing man. The red man in the video is a reference to those trying to reach their goals, with the sunrise being the spectacular goal. The overall structure is a portrait of the journey that we all go through and miss. Overall message: never forget to enjoy the process.

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Story

Ink, Notebook soaked in coffee

The overall aim of Art is to tell a story. I aimed a bit further to take this message into a literal meaning and make my artwork into an entrance to my story. The book frame is a reference to the common cliche of one being sucked into a book and another world. The goat, book, snake, apple and thorn crown are all references to the bible, the oldest story known to humanity. These elements give signs that the reader is being sucked into a bible, the record of humanity and God.

Code_Axolotl

Plastic runner and thick wire

Through these scraps, I sought to build a purely organic creature like the amphibian animal axolotl. The white and saturated colours refer to the Japanese painter Murakami and act as an extension of his interpretation of “Oni”, a Japanese ogre. Using the characteristics that most of the paintings in the exhibition are modern, the saturated colours stand out, making the creature seem like an anomaly and a disaster in a peaceful exhibition, just as the “Oni” used to cause trouble in Japan.

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Split Egos

Acrylic on illustration board

Metaphorically speaking, multiple mirrors may produce multiple reflections thus creating multiple or essential other versions of ourselves. This artwork is my self-portrait reflected by different big parts of my life: playing badminton, studying, playing video games, and sleeping. I found the green backdrop of my home to be the very background of these reflections leading up to the sky, as I am the viewer of these reflections integrating all these parts of myself.

Flower_1

Plastic runner and Thick wire

Overall, the artwork is similar to a flower growing out of stone, a symbol of hope. However, the mechanical features contrast from a normal flower and give it a distinction from the so simulacrum peace that the school tries to replicate from the old English atmosphere. The raw and random colours resemble a graphical bug in a game, as this artwork's existence in the school is an oxymoron.

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Life Journey

Canvas, Easel

I wanted to express the message that life finds a way no matter how hopeless the situation is. I chose “Falling” as the negative factor of life and created a Goldberg machine to first express fall as the literal fall of the ball. By connecting the rails to the end, the metal marble that was dropped from the start continues no matter how chaotic the surroundings are.

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Flapping Above the Tides

Traditional Korean ink, Charcoal and acrylic

I wanted to express the very physical act of a moment in certain hobbies that I could not explore in my life yet. Fishing, cave-exploring, and having a dog are the top three hobbies I would like to explore. I utilised charcoal to depict the various acts of physical movement with broad, and vigorous strokes to capture the energy. Moreover, among the movement, I created a creature of my imagination that encapsulated these very moments.