brilliant 30: Kyoungtack Hong

Artist Kyoungtack Hong employs the universal imagery of modern capitalist society in his work. From cult figures to present-day celebrities; from books as stores of knowledge and pens as tools to write the mind; from the Virgin Mary to Barbie dolls; from classical music to African-American funk. Hong has managed to encompass the dichotomous nature of these images in his body of work. Critics evaluating Hong’s work are impelled to merge seemingly contradictory elements, breaking down distinctions between sacred and pagan, novelty and reenactment, religious faith and everyday life, worship and pleasure.
 
Hong fills his canvases with minute details of still life and interior landscape, and adds visual brilliance to everyday objects by coating them in bright, extraordinary colors. Pop art is well known for choosing mass media images as its main subject matter.

However, Hong’s subjects are more personal and unique in nature, and focus on honest realism. Through his paintings, we enter into a world filled with the brilliance of neon light.
 
His recent work, Six Celestial Bodies, represents the simultaneity of space. The canvas is configured with overlapping circular shapes with its mass weight at the center. Rudolf Arnheim’s “Art and Visual Perception,” posits that circular figures depict inherent spatial features with a strong tendency to form their own world, without the influence of external forces. These traits seem to illustrate the artist’s quote, “I wish for my work to flow out from the most secular to the most holy.” This ideal product of repeated circular pattern could perhaps be regarded as a new religion for the 21st Century.