Being, Solo show in London

'Being'

La scatola Gallery 

22.06.2012-10.08.2012

Jukhee Kwon's work is the accumulative result of a destructive and repetitive process; the individual book, through the artist’s reworking, becomes something monumental, often returning to its original form- from tree to book, from book to tree. In Being La Scatola Gallery will house a new work by Kwon taking the form of a suspended and overflowing bookcase.

The artist notes a personal and cultural narrative within her work, which came after the act of making; a feeling of freedom from restraint perhaps, or a living-through of her own migratory experience illustrated in the books themselves. Kwon creates through the destructive process, transforming both the object itself and its relation to the viewer; her work is inspired by artist John Latham, who used ideas of disintegration and the book, notably changing the form of Greenberg’s Art and Culture by asking his students to chew the pages to result in a distilled liquid version.

Korean artist Chan Kwang Young is another notable connection; his paper sculptures, in a manner resounding heavily with the work of Kwon, take the form of huge and arresting structures made from the most delicate of parts; basic pockets of information which combine and open to become something both new and referential. Through negation Kwon’s books become beings, returned in part to their original form.

Jukhee Kwon was born in Dae-Jun in Korea in 1981 and now lives and works in London. She studied a BA in Fine Art at Chung-ang University in Korea and completed her MA in Book Arts from Camberwell College, University of the Arts London in 2011. In 2004 she was awarded the An-dong painting prize in Korea. Kwon has exhibited widely in both Europe and Korea. Selected recent exhibitions include Korean Art Now: Place Not Found, Smokehouse Gallery, London 2012; Works on Paper, La Scatola Gallery in association with GX Gallery, London 2012; Inside-out, book sculpture work, London 2011; The Face of the Shape, La Scatola Gallery, London 2011, Four, everyday life, Hanmi Gallery, London 2011; Trajector Art Fair, Brussels 2011; Casting an eye on Korea, Paris 2011.

Recent web news about my book work at My Modern Met by Alice

Korean-born, London-based Jukhee Kwon is a rising new artist who's making a name for herself with these monumental sculptures that look as if pages of books are desperately trying to escape. One of her newest pieces was just displayed at a Korean contemporary art group show in Paris. The multi-level sculpture resembled a cascading waterfall shooting down the middle of a spiral staircase.

This past June, Kwon put on her first solo show, called Being, in London at La Scatola Gallery. Easily one off her most impressive pieces was a sculpture that resembled a gargantuan tree. Hanging from the ceiling, it asked its viewers to think about the destruction and re-creation of nature through art - how a book could go back to its original form - from tree to book, from book to tree.

Kwon destroys books in order to order to give them a new lease on life. Each sculpture is constructed by meticulously cutting hundreds of pages and then arranging them to form new objects.

As La Scatola Gallery states, "The artist notes a personal and cultural narrative within her work, which came after the act of making; a feeling of freedom from restraint perhaps, or a living-through of her own migratory experience illustrated in the books themselves. Kwon creates through the destructive process, transforming both the object itself and its relation to the viewer; her work is inspired by artist John Latham, who used ideas of disintegration and the book, notably changing the form of Greenberg’s Art and Culture by asking his students to chew the pages to result in a distilled liquid version."

You can see some of our favorite pieces, below.