Beyond the canvas plane | Jaena Kwon
Jan 23, 2020 – Feb 23, 2020
Crossing Art is delighted to announce the opening of Beyond The Canvas Plane, a solo exhibition featuring the renowned Korean American artist Jaena Kwon. Kwon arrived in Connecticut first in 2012 then in New York 2014 from South Korea and determined to deepen her practice of abstract painting. Her canvas has since been experimenting with texture and shape. The color of her works has been mainly in acrylic on light density fiberboard and oil on canvas. Going beyond the canvas, texture is a vitally important characteristic. Kwon’s colored shapes display a tactile, almost sculptural texture in synchronization with color and form. Countless experiments in mixing paints led her to contemplate its viscosity and the relationship between this materiality and human flesh. While most art is optical, there is a haptic aspect to her oeuvre. From her point of view, interconnectedness with loved ones or support through touch is a huge comfort in such a dynamic, alienating city. Her experiences in New York (she maintains a studio in Brooklyn) were translated into her works through the medium of painting that is deployed in a sensual way, since she thinks it is the perfect material to render the human skin (a correlation that has served such artists as Lucian Freud, Lisa Yuskavage and Byron Kim). Kwon created folded shapes colored with acrylic paint to highlight the sensual and haptic characteristic of painting that can radiate the warmth of a human body standing next to another, and the kinesthetic, tactile memories from the presence of your loved ones. Inspired by the virtuosic textural of oil paint by the masters and the warm quality they achieved.
Kwon’s process of translating a pure aesthetic value into reality is also a process of reflecting upon herself as her mind and body synchronize to make the art piece. Kwon’s work is manually sanded down. Every surface has gone through the touch of her bare hands. She hopes that viewers can experience a sense of contact and affection through the visual-tactile interplay her work at one’s own speed. The exhibition will be on view till February 23rd, 2020.