We cannot reach an in-depth interpretation of her work without our first perception of the space/place her work connotes and Han’s first thought we meet in the space/place. I think we can find a clue to the “first thought” in three algorithms: the first is the very elemental stance space/place connotes. The second is an extension of the concept of space/place through which it meets the concept of color and light as the second concept. What is the third? The flatness of this algorithm may look like a triangular structure – like a pyramid. First of all, I suggest we recollect a pyramid structure and put a red heart radiating light within it.

If the concept of space Han works or displays is to be defined, we above all need to think about how the space meets the notion of space underlined above. Is the space occupied by man or by a thing? Are human activities conducted or not? Is the area for human activity and physical movement secured? Or is it a space or a place? If it is a space, why is it unfamiliar and abstract? If it is a place, how does the unfamiliar, abstract place change into a concrete one?

Yi-Fu Tuan, a Chinese-U.S. geographer states space is movement, a haven of individual values, and a serene hub where safety and affection is sensed. Denoting the notion of “topophilia,” he has mentioned place being formed through an accumulation of our experiences and where love dwells. He means space and place are not different but the same, and their symbolic import differs in accordance with the subjects who experience them. What is Han’s space? Is the place really space or topophilia?

We come to realize that Han’s space works are not merely the material basis of conceptual spaces but are closely bound up with the three themes Yi-Fu Tuan noted: the biological basis of experience; the relation between space and place; the scope of human experience. Tuan asserted that a museum (or a gallery) has no existential foundation in that it is an artificial cultural space unlike a spontaneous village. Han unfolded her notion of space, paradoxically transfiguring such space into a biological space of experience. Irrespective of space design or visually objective reality, her work proceeds to a venue for subjective experience referred to as “a responsive fantasy”.

The second algorithm automatically created in the process of the space, where a work of art becomes a place, is color and light. Color/light is not a concept fixed in a symmetrical point of space/place. Han initially pursued two-dimensional pictorial work, and this two-dimensional work meets space. Han seems to contemplate the “scope of human experience” of space itself rather than any idea on painting, place, or space. Color/light is an element she involves as a crucial theme of space installation in this process. As mentioned above, the very important reason of her choice of color is the color orange extensively means healing, power, creativity, encouragement, and patience, and has the effect of provoking activity, appetite, and sociability, increasing the amount of oxygen conveyed to the brain, and triggering encouragement.

The color and light she has chosen, a spatial arrangement of the color and harmony of light, and space design inducing viewers to have space experience, are not for viewing. As such we presuppose that we cannot reach the true nature of her work by reading it as formative abstract installation. She seeks to raise spiritual inspiration in viewers as her works denote. It may be a representation of her inner spiritual agitation, healing of the soul, or the stage-matter and the self, the subject and space become one. Her latest works are three-dimensional installation pieces in which the conception of interaction underlining a viewer’s autonomous experience is further expanded.

Han has confessed that her works derive from the orientation of her life as a child, her unstable position, depression, studying abroad, and the reality she has faced in Korea after her return. It is quite natural the original form of her work stems from her contemplation, but aesthetic metaphors in her work are meditative and relational.

In the exhibition held at the OCI Museum of Art, Han showcases an installation under the theme Da Capo, hiding her intention to return to the first moment when the algorithm of her life and art was formed. With this she returns to her origins, but her work always feels fresh.
- Kim Jong-Gil (art critic)

*image (left)
Anna Han 
A Place Where You and The Light Rest, 2013
Size Variable, 950x555x341cm
courtesy of the artist and OCI Museum of Art