{"id":3628,"date":"2024-12-30T17:00:41","date_gmt":"2024-12-30T17:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dartmagazine.com\/?p=3628"},"modified":"2024-12-30T17:00:41","modified_gmt":"2024-12-30T17:00:41","slug":"ran-hwang-evanescence-and-regeneration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dartmagazine.com\/?p=3628","title":{"rendered":"Ran Hwang: Evanescence and Regeneration"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by: Thalia Vrachopoulos<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ran Hwang\u2019s latest exhibition at the uptown Leila Heller Gallery re-introduces an abundance of transient forms and the eternal ephemeral. Hwang\u2019s oeuvre\u00a0\u2013 many of her artworks are located in such prestigious collections as, the Brooklyn Museum, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and Seoul\u2019s National Museum of Contemporary Art\u2013 is\u00a0inspired by her ever-changing life between the US and Korea, as well as her life-long practise of Seon Buddhism. Hwang’s two-dimensional sculptural pieces are embedded with a delicate sense of ethereal\u00a0melancholy as if\u00a0mourning for the end of a life lived and for the pain imbuing the one to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Ran
Ran Hwang, Evanescense and Regeneration, Becoming Again_ETBF,<\/em> 2024, paper buttons, pins, beads on Plexiglass, 94.4 x 141.7 inches (6p)
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Hwang\u2019s new artworks created site-specifically for the\u00a0Evanescence and Regeneration<\/em>\u00a0exhibition at Leila Heller Gallery\u2013 represent yet another step into an abstract vocabulary in radiant images of impermanent evanescent blooming forms. As seen in her series titled\u00a0Becoming Again<\/em>,\u00a0in which branches of yellowish, rose and white plum blossoms flourish in snake-like constellations against a deep-blue\u00a0sky, tangled together with cobweb-like boughs \u2013 all recurring symbols for the incessant ephemeral and fragility of life and nature \u2013 Hwang, carefully perfects with eloquent mastery, the unique embodiment of her well-known iconography into a static background of transparent Plexiglas.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Ran
Ran Hwang, Evanescense and Regeneration Healing oblivious aqua_OS<\/em>, 2024,
buttons, Hanji paper, beads, pins on wooden panels, 78.7 x 141.7 inches
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Similarly, in her maximalist work titled\u00a0Healing Oblivious Aqua_OS<\/em>,\u00a0Hwang reformulates the silver-coloured wooden panel \u2013 in which her overflowing floret clusters, organically spring \u2013 into an immense two-dimensional ellipsoid shape, symbolizing the imminent transitory of natural forms. At the same time through her expression, she comments on the constant eternal cosmic regeneration of the Earth\u2019s biosphere, despite the fleeting nature of phenomenal life. Her delicate blossoms with their colorful petals, appear to flow into a liquid phantasmagoria of becoming. Hwang\u2019s Hanji paper and button-made florets appear to effortlessly meander through the dark branches into blooming bracelets of iridescent stars against the silver firmament.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Hwang\u2019s artistic ingenuity stands out in her two small tondos, aptly titled\u00a0Beyond Serenity<\/em>.\u00a0Poetically transforming with a totally new approach, a similar concept as her work Ode to the Full Moon<\/em>,\u00a0in which, the bright moon disc appears in fiery colors, beautifully interwoven with blossoms. The lunar disk is traditionally a beloved motif of earthly ephemerality and waning change in Korean art. However, in Beyond Serenity<\/em>, Hwang reverses its customary meaning revealing like a Zen poem, the hidden and metaphysical connectivity beneath all of life\u2019s phenomena and their apparent change through a conceptual paradox. The spherical geometrical shape of the full-moon now becomes a mystical symbol, not as symbol of constant impermanence, but of a fixed serenity; a static tranquility, into which all worldly change is melded into an abstract oneness, despite the ever-changing becoming of life and nature. In this way, the two monochromatic pieces delve into the transcendent realms of non-objectivity. The individual floral figures, which once engulfed the moon\u2019s surface\u00a0have dissolved now into a primordial womb, into a regenerating eternal One, in which fading and becoming has totally ceased.\u00a0Something, that is reinforced by their crushing red or pink monochrome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hwang\u2019s thematic choice of terrestrial transience comes to grips with the current exhibition of the Japanese artist Kenta Anzai, titled Impermanence<\/em> at New York\u2019s Guild Gallery. Although both artists address themes of ephemerality, their artistic methods diverge significantly. Anzai\u2019s abstract yet dispiriting objects \u2013a silent plethora of black vessels, primarily made of earthenware and urushi-tree lacquer, like the aesthetic tradition of wabi-sabi \u2013 constitute a material embodiment of the brief beauty of nature, adhering thus to a minimalist abstract approach of emptiness. His hollow pottery of organic shapes reflects though raw simplicity, and monochrome materiality, feelings of corrosion, exploiting vacancy or emptiness as artistic elements to formally render the fleeting experience of time\u2019s endless passage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Ran
Ran Hwang, Evanescence and Regeneration<\/em> opening<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In contrast, Hwang\u2019s installations tackle the metaphysical problem of impermanence, not only through ascetic minimalism but via an electrifying maximalism of regenerating form and vivacious colors. Flowers, cobwebs, branches and falling stars symbolize eternal change. Nature constantly regenerates new ephemeral forms that live until their eventual passing, repeating thus a never-ending cycle of generation, degeneration, regeneration. Firmly standing on middle ground between sensuous representation and Anzai\u2019s negating abstraction, Hwang blithely confronts the irreversible flowing of time, not with an abstract rendering of the void, but with a poetic iconography of rejuvenating nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Ran
Ran Hwang, Evanescence and Regeneration<\/em> opening<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Evanescence and Regeneration<\/em>\u00a0exhibition offers a riveting encounter with the experience of transience and rebirth. Hwang creates a material and spiritual dialectic, through her ethereal works in unconventional media, highlighting the beauty of fragility and the circularity of time. Her monumental floral imagery stabilizes a fugitive glimpse of incessant flux and temporality into biomorphic figures. But simultaneously, it transforms the vast openness of infinity into the frailest of phenomena, merely a blossom\u2019s\u00a0petal. In a way,\u00a0Hwang successfully undertakes to poetically inject the\u00a0eternal now of Pascal, into the brief temporality of the moment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by: Thalia Vrachopoulos Ran Hwang\u2019s latest exhibition at the uptown Leila Heller Gallery re-introduces an abundance of transient forms and the eternal ephemeral. Hwang\u2019s oeuvre\u00a0\u2013 many of her artworks are located in such prestigious collections as, the Brooklyn Museum, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and Seoul\u2019s National Museum of Contemporary Art\u2013 is\u00a0inspired by her … <\/p>\n

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