A transparent glass bowl is heaped with black ash and cigarette butts that seem to be stubbed out after being smoked by someone. Although otherwise carelessly passed by, the painted image of cigarette ends that are magnified tens of times captures the viewer’s eye. As if being attracted by the power of its presence that was hidden in the appearance of ordinariness but now has been revealed, I come closer to the image. And at that very moment, it turns out to be an abstract painting in which contours are blurred and transition from one color to another is subtle but nevertheless, the strikingly impressive image of cigarettes is still hovering in my mind.

Since 2000, An Sung Ha(b. 1977) has painted half-smoked or thrown away cigarette butts scattered around her studio in a realistic way. The artist looks for the subject that she wants to paint and stages it a little bit to take a close-up shot of it, which is then transferred to the canvas. It is only through this close-up image that the viewer is exposed to the details of pieces of crumpled cigarettes piled up together or crushed in dirty ash water. Here, we find the distorted portrait of modern man who is cast into the troubled life, as is illustrated by Fernand Leger(1881-1955)’s argument on the personification of the close-up detail. 

In this way, An’s work creates a kind of emotional appeal that cannot be achieved by a realistic expression as vivid as the real thing. Therefore, it maintains a clear distance from the cold image of the mechanical and precise depiction of Hyperrealism painting that forces the viewer to focus only on what he sees. As the spiritual consolation of a puff of smoking is sweet while it is bitter to the tongue and harmful to the body, the cigarette, as a symbol for modern society, is an ambivalent subject for the artist. This is also applied to her other subjects such as the candy that she has painted since around 2004 and the cork stopper that began to appear in her recent paintings. Besides, as items that have unique taste and flavor, such as liquor, cigarettes, and candies, provide the sense of escape from everyday life as well as sweet hallucination, An’s work also reminds the viewer of the non-daily realms such as an indulgence in a momentary sensation, the escape from the pressure of the tension in reality, and so on.

In this exhibition that is made up of new works made since the artist’s last solo show in 2010, An explores a new story using cork stoppers. If cigarettes and candies are doomed to thrown away or disappear immediately after being consumed, cork stoppers have the flavor of the vintage that deepens with time while the liquor in a bottle flies away in vain as soon as you pull out the cork out of it. This is much the same as the memory of the day when you drank is more precious than the taste of the drink itself. Therefore, what is reflected on the cold and smooth glass surface of her work may be abstract impressions and recollections of life that go far beyond the traces of reality. This is why we still perceive the faint fragrance of cigarettes or the sweetness of candies that is floating in the air, as well as have a strangely feeling of being comforted by it, even after we turned away from her paintings.

*image (left)
© Sung Ha An
courtesy of the artist and Gana Art