Nature is great and splendor to artist Hwang Na hyeon. It is the flower, the fruit, the sea and also the sky. Many different aspects of human life shown through zebras are revealed by abundant expression in the shape of the green nature. At this exhibition "Home", artist Hwang na hyun had Zebras wear fruits and flowers above their heads and raise a toast for abundance of nature. This series of "Home" shows visual images of nature, where we are longing to head for outside world. In the mean time, artist revealed the beauty of nature and represented the concentrated life energy through the decorations of flowers and fruits. It seems to explain the impression of mother nature like Africa where the dynamic living things breathe. Zebra's gaze into the house shows meditation to the world of abundant life force and the step of ontological reflection of artist who is represented as zebra in the world. In fact, her art works emphasized nature's original figure through the clean world where zebra's frisking around and called our attention to the back to the old days. Desire for the lost paradise now seems to expand to the inner world instead of heading to the outside. In fact, the house(home) has been recognized as the fundamental image of comfort and relaxation we need to reach. Clams, conch, closet, as the secret internal space, house is what brings us into the world we have been desired. As a matter of fact, in some fairy tales or myth, there is a door to the mysterious world when enters the closet.
Gaston Bachelard analyzed space, drawers, boxes, cabinets, corners in poetry of space(La Poétique de l'espace) and organized the subjects : "expansion into an infinite, dialectic of inside and outside, circle modeling". According to him, imagination of this space is referred to womb homing instinct(母胎歸所本能), that is to say Jonah complex. Johan Complex is a spiritual states developed from our subconscious while we were in mother's womb, in other words, feeling calm and comfort as if covered with some space. Artist and poet, therefore, have dreamed for the space because of Johan Complex which is human instinct of calm and comfort. In other words, the house is the synonym for nature, comfort and relax. Carl Gustav Jung also explain these break and calm to "Anima", and he said "Anima means femininity existing inside our subconscious". Falling into a reverie is meeting "Anima", and this anima is the other word of a break. Consequently her new artworks are actualized as a world of break and show the state of her soul and body living in communion with nature.
Nietzsche said that art gives higher assignment for life and exposes real metaphysical action. Perhaps purity of nature which artist has been seeking through zebra's clean eyes may be the true colors and a goal which we have to recover. Mother nature being full of healthy vitality decorated with flowers and fruits and plants having abundant water gives us delight and peace. In other words, the world with metaphor of zebra is the final imaginary destination we have to reach. Therefore zebras consistently wearing flowers and fruits in her artworks reflect collective unconsciousness and this imaginary world resembles the very first place in the myth where god, having full communion with nature, created at the beginning. Scholars think imagination is the abiltiy to find the road to the origination, that is to say phenomenon before the knowledge earned from rationality, and imagination is the basic contact between artist's intuition and the world, and it is also the primal and original contact. Then her painting style was born from her imagination with physical and logical persuasive. It is back to the myth, homing to the origin and longing and homesick to lost time. In her artworks, zebras wear abundant nature, and their glance send words to the society of post-modernism. Zebra's contemplation is the cry for the recovery of human instinct to the higher and deep world and the keen eyes on modern material civilization. Zebras in her artwork send you a message that "Delight of nature is so gorgeous and pure like this". As primal image, Hwang Na Hyun's contemplation to the Anima and break become meaningful to us. It is because she shows a long way trip to nature itself as a new meaning for finding nature with longing and self-reflection to origin. The landscape of the travel is not only strong and gorgeous, but also make long emotional resonance. Because of this, we experience vertiginous catharsis and are deeply moved. We Definitely realized that nature is the existence of wonder and fear which we can not even imitate. From now on, I will expect her art changed to literary artworks and touching story from wonderful and marvelous figures of primal and original nature.(2011.8)
On primitive image prologue (序 说)
Bak Ok Saeng (art critic, museum curator HANWON)
