Suyeont

I am trying to make visible the fragility of life, and the events that happen within it.

Moving between drawings on graph paper, paintings, and works made with cloth, I inscribe onto thin supports the precious sensations I want to hold on to as memory. The nature of a life in which “transience” and “meaning” coexist always unsettles me. Through my work I want to express the state in which things that are nothing yet everything, momentary yet eternal, vanishing yet dizzyingly beautiful, collide with one another.

My work falls roughly into three series.

First, drawings in coloured pencil on graph paper.
These are essential for quickly recording the sensation of a given moment. On the order generated by horizontal and vertical lines, I draw freely; sometimes following the lines, sometimes stepping off them. I watch for the sensations that have sharpened me across a day: the touch of water during swimming, the warmth of being held, a sudden anxiety — strong sensations that confirm I am here, and I record them. In those moments of concentration I feel most strongly that I am alive. Many stories are compressed, simplified and turned into signs.

Second, paintings in acrylic.
Painting opens up a spatial depth that drawing could not reach. I stand longer in front of the canvas than I did at the drawing, and return to the moment that sensation first came. Two thin layers of cotton cloth and many thinly applied layers of paint bring me closer to that fundamental sensation.

Third, textile works made by cutting and sewing together semi-transparent fabrics such as Nobang and Oksa.
The cloth walks toward the viewer, wraps the body and creates a flow of movement. Its thinness is well suited to a state that is “present yet not present,” “seen yet unseen.” In these works the iconography has clearer boundaries, pinned to its place by needle and thread.

These three approaches complement each other and function organically. Their destination is the same: “to make the fragility of life visible, and in doing so to remind us of the moments more deeply worth blessing.”

Through the exhibition, I want to present such moments.