Kyung Hwa Shon consistently throws himself to a new city and records psychological reaction happening there visually. He usually works in the big cities, such as Seoul, Chicago, Paris and London, because he can focus on own psychological reaction sensitively when exposed to complicated environment. In the perspective of environmental mentality, the artist explores own mentality, like unfamiliarity in new environmental, culture shock, spatial experience, or adaptation or maladjustment to the environment and visualize it. The artist calls such work 'Psychogeographic Contemporary Abstract Landscapes' by himself.

The artist focuses on city environment, system and architecture. In buildings including a history of city, people experience special psychological state combining with individuality and speciality of the space, which he wants to share with others through his works.

As reflecting his interest, there are many architectural facts in his work, such as form, color and texture to express esthetic emotion as well as basic elements of architecture. Emotion and reaction derived from the space is a result of overall image composed by various stimulation, such as design elements, light, sound and so on. Architectural space is visualized and symbolized a person's understanding on intricate life environment and because of this, the artist adopts such various formative characteristics of architecture to his work to make a structure of 'psychological topography' in the city, which lead the audience to countless meanings.

Like this, Kyung Hwa Shon recreates images from city landscape using various architectural elements. Color is the best one to express psychological reaction and line, side and form are the good tools for speed, a sense of weight and a rhythmical sense. His work is very covert and appealing because it reveals his thought, emotion and values aroused by dynamism of city system, contradictoriness of social structure and irrationalism of human thinking secretly. And it will be interpreted in individually special meaning to contemporary people.

*image (left)
Every Second in the City, 2013
acrylic on wood, 174x180x30cm
© Kyung Hwa Shon

Courtesy of the artist and SOMA Museum of Art