Kitchener City Hall, 200 King Street West, Kitchener, Produced by CAFKA. Photo: Shaquille De Peazer.
Eungjung Hwang's art explores images that are rooted in dreams and the subconcious. Her characters inhabit a fantastic reality following a structure of interwoven dream logic. Different narratives are connected to each other through this dream logic. The narratives loop through a series of imaginary cycles of infancy, dream, death and the beyond.
Eunjung Hwang develops her Curious Creatures in a variety of two dimensional media as well as in the form of inflatable sculpture and animated videos. For CAFKA.18 we asked her to develop an inflatable sculpture to be placed on the roof of the Kitchener City Hall. The artist began to ask many questions about the City Hall site, about Kitchener and what was unique about it. We began to send her images of the City Hall, historic images recounting the story of the Kaiser's Bust and images of city's British military namesake, Lord Kitchener. But it was images of city's current mayor, Barry Vrbanovic, that she responded to the most, and we encouraged her. She began a series of fantastic drawings inspired by a Google image search of the Mayor of Kitchener, which she called "Head Man."
Left: Kitchener Mayor Barry Vrbanovic Right: Eunjung Hwang, Head Man, preliminary sketches.
After having established that we would be working with an inflatable scupture, we consided a number of locations. There were two main concerns about locating the work at ground level: vandalism and noise. We decided to avoid tempting the nightly intoxicated with a convenient punching bag. But also, aesthetically, who likes having to listen to a big compessor or fan running all day long? By placing the sculpture on the roof we would eliminate the annoying sound of the blower and the work would appear to float, effortlessly above the city. It seemed then that the best image would be the "Flying Head Man" -- character #1 in the image above, with two legs attached to the back of the large head that give it the appearance of flying.
Head Man was fabricated in South Korea by M Direction based on the artist's drawing.
It was installed on roof of the south wing of the Kitchener City Hall for the duration of CAFKA.18.
Photo Left: Shaquille de Peazer. Photo Right: Isaac Ayala.
About the artist
"I've drawn thousands of characters. Doodling is something I've done since my childhood. My characters come out of an automatic process. The characters transform themselves by their endless reincarnations. The characters unfold narratives by their fantastic reality following a structure of interwoven dream logic. Different narratives are connected to each other through this dream logic. The narratives loop through a series of imaginary cycles of infancy, dream, death and the beyond. The overall narratives are meant to be enjoyed like rhythmic structure of music rather than readable stories." Eunjung Hwang
New York-based artist Eunjung Hwang was born in Seoul, South Korea. She received her MFA in Computer Arts at the School of Visual Arts, New York. Selected solo exhibitions include "6 Categories," Gallery Chosen, Seoul, South Korea, 2016. “Three Thousand Revisits” University Art Museum, Albany, New York (2011), "Eunjung Hwang" LA Center for Digital Arts (2008) and "Creature Feature", Sungkok Art Museum, Seoul (2007). Selected festivals & group exhibitions include Transmediale10, Berlin, Germany (2010) "Analog Animation", Drawing Center, New York (2006) and International Media Award for Science and Art, ZKM, Germany (2005)
In 2006 Eunjung Hwang received the New York State Council on Arts Grant and in 2004 the principal prize of the 50th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. She was a resident fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Germany (2009-10) and Villa Ruffiex at Chateau Mercier, Switzerland (2014).
Image top: Eungjung Wang, "Sketches for CAFKA.18."
Produced by CAFKA
