Won Seoung-won deals with images. When considering that she specialized in sculpture, it would be wrong to say that she sculpts images to be integrated into a layered story beyond simply using individual images. To her, images are an element to make a work, and a tool that symbolizes, abstracts, and analyzes her subject. The title, image sculptor, would describe her best when considering the method with which she creates her works and the stories she unfold in them.

She particularly obsesses over home. She compares this morbid obsession to a seagull. The moon falls over the horizon, and the sea is enraged, appearing to burst into huge waves at any time. A teetering ship mounted with houses that had been collected from all over the world drifts in the sea. These houses, which are assets on land but a dangerous burden at sea, are an obsession whose absence would be better for the ship. As a ship might sink by the piling of houses bound to it by tangled ropes, a person obsessing about something might be attacked by their obsession. No one can obtain anything with their hands seizing something else.

There is a character that sticks to one thing and rejects sharing anything with other people. People with such a character dream an absurd dream, as a rooster wishes to be a peacock. To show off even a small vegetable garden, they cut down a good mountain and make it into a vegetable garden for everyone to see—here, the word ‘decorate’ would be more proper than the word ‘make.’ The action of showing off is that a person only cares about other people’s eyes and words regardless of their own willingness. However, other people’s eyes and words are eventually their own ruler that filters out external views. They are more proud of the pumpkins and peppers harvested from their field than the hundred-year-old pine trees. The judgment of which one is more important depends on whether the object is worthy of pride. As a peacock cannot be a rooster, the action of showing off beyond leaving their place will devastate their surroundings slowly.

Won Seoung-won expresses the character of people that may be morbidly degenerated, such as obsession, pride, ostentation, perfectionism, responsibility, and so on, with images. These images are the results of her analyzing such characteristics based on her formative sensitivity, which means that she understands the lives of people through images. This work is a healing for her, and will be a healing for the audience. Thus, it is expected that while looking her pieces, the audience will think about how their own character is seen.
- Gustav D. Yim (Artside gallery curator, art critic)

Courtesy of Artside Gallery