Ben Brown Fine Arts is pleased to present HYON GYON: Cruel World, the first solo exhibition of artist Hyon Gyon at our Hong Kong gallery. Hyon Gyon’s paintings and sculptures teem with a raw and fervent energy, as she incorporates materials such as melted fabric, foam board, gold leaf, encaustic, spray paint, hair and found objects into her work. The diversity of materials employed by Hyon Gyon seemingly parallels the multiplicity and complexity of themes she explores through her work such as shamanism, grief, catharsis, stigma, cultural identity and sexual politics. Hyon Gyon relies on a stream of consciousness in her artistic process, which encompasses painting, sculpting, installation and performance art. HYON GYON: Cruel World provides a comprehensive survey of Hyon Gyon’s unique, highly expressive and seductively tactile output from 2014 to 2017.
In Eleven Minutes, 2014, Hyon Gyon creates a sculptural relief upon the surface of her canvas with thick, haphazard layers of cloth and wax, evoking a mysterious topography. The work takes its title from Paulo Coelho’s novel Eleven Minutes, which chronicles a woman’s journey to finding sacred love. Hyon Gyon is never revealing or didactic in her work, but rather allows the viewer to create his or her own experience with these richly material, visually mesmerizing, abstract pieces.
In her most recent works, such as Still Life II, Diabolic Flower V and Diabolic Flower VI, all 2017, Hyon Gyon explores the effects of layering and melting clothing, often laced with metallic paint, into foam board. Using a deliberately selected color palette, Hyon Gyon creates luxuriously surfaced works that are at once organic and synthetic, beautiful and haunting, chaotic and harmonious, abstract and coded.
Born in South Korea in 1979, Hyon Gyon holds a bachelor’s degree in western painting from Mokwon University, South Korea, and both a master’s degree and doctoral degree in painting from Kyoto City University of Arts, Japan. Hyon Gyon’s work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including the Brooklyn Museum, New York; Museum of Kyoto, Japan; Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo and is included in many public and private collections such as Takahashi Collection, Japan; Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles; and High Museum of Art, Atlanta. Hyon Gyon currently resides in New York City.
The artist will be at the opening and is available for interviews.
