SOLO AWARD 2018/9
VEstiges of seeing | Ilkwon yoon
LONDON ART FAIR | 16 - 20 JANUARY 2019
ILKWON YOON | WINNER OF THE 2018 SOLO AWARD™
VESTIGES OF SEEING
STAND P31, ART PROJECTS, LONDON ART FAIR
16 - 20 JANUARY 2019
VESTIGES OF SEEING
STAND P31, ART PROJECTS, LONDON ART FAIR
16 - 20 JANUARY 2019
| ilkwonyoon_press_release.pdf |
Chiara Williams Contemporary is proud to present the SOLO Award™ 2018 winner Ilkwon Yoon in Art Projects at the London Art Fair 2019. Ilkwon Yoon was selected by Sarah Monk (Director London Art Fair), Sarah Martin (Head of Exhibitions, Turner Contemporary), Alistair Hicks (Writer, Curator, former Senior Curator at Deutsche Bank) and Chiara Williams (panel chair and Director Chiara Williams Contemporary).
VESTIGES OF SEEING
‘Vestiges of Seeing’ is an updated body of work by Ilkwon Yoon, using printmaking techniques across 2D and 3D media to question permanence, memory and value, relating to his own personal childhood memories, in a way that the artist hopes is universally accessible.
Yoon often screen-prints on paper napkins and toilet paper, materials that are numerous, layered and disposable. Here, traditional screen-printing techniques (which are laborious to set up, but then easily reproduced) collide with mid-20th century Pop Art concerns about consumerism and the throwaway society, hint at the disappearing art of fore-edge painting (when an image is painted on the edges of a book's pages) and critique the very contemporary problem of not looking where we are going when our eyes are glued to a ‘phone screen.
Adopting very human tendencies to make sense of our world - stacking, layering, ordering, filtering and re- membering - Yoon encourages us to pay attention to the things we miss in our daily lives and invites us to look to the empty spaces in our memories. He reminds us how insensitive we have become to our surroundings and he asks us to slow down. Radically, the work is perhaps about ‘slow looking’, which, in the context of an art fair, is pretty challenging.
‘The Movement in the Space’ is a series of delicate etchings describing the movement of playground equipment. Although derived from the artist’s own childhood memories, by silently re-animating the objects and figures in this way, he summons and imprints the past onto the present, inviting us to recall our own playground memories.
‘The Path of Eyes’ is a series of mixed media works addressing the value of the unnoticed visual information that surrounds us on daily journeys. From that which is routinely missed, to that which is literally overlooked, we are all so busy getting somewhere that we are often not present in the moment. The artist retraced a journey in South Korea, from Seoul to Donghae, to find his old primary School. Yoon took hundreds of photographs along the journey, wherever his gaze happened to pause or linger, accumulating them into a fastidious mosaic of smaller images laid over the central image of his ‘memorable place’. The work echoes the journey itself; by elevating the ‘unimportant’ collateral scenes into the same field as the consciously viewed subject, Yoon asserts their value, endowing what we miss with as much significance as that which we gaze upon in order to remember.
‘Memory’ is the title of the large sculptural work in the middle of the stand and it focuses on the characteristics of objects comprised of layers. Napkins, stacked in countless ply, are quickly used and forgotten everyday objects. The screen-printed images derive from photographs of the artist’s primary school classmates. Yoon reproduces the faces of those remembered, partly remembered and completely forgotten, to communicate the process of fading memory. Although we may have forgotten most of our classmates, the clarity of our memory depends on our attachment to the individual, and the artist is interested in the disparities between these vestiges of memory.
‘Precious Memory’ is printed directly onto the fore-edge of fifty-four toilet rolls, and then framed. A toilet roll is composed of hundreds of sheets of paper and is an apt medium for expressing fading memories by virtue of the way in which the sheets are unceremoniously consumed in everyday life. By framing the work, the artist attempts to stop the inevitable, to protect the fragile surface and give permanence to the legacy of his own precious memory.
LIST OF WORKS
The Movement in the Space series
Seesaw – Etching / 80x120cm / 5 editions / £700 (Unframed: £450) / 2018
Swing – Etching / 30x40cm / 12 editions / £350 (Unframed: £270) / 2018
Korean Jumping Game – Etching / 30x40cm / 12 editions / £350 (Unframed: £270) / 2018 Skateboard – Etching / 30x40cm / 12 editions / £350 (Unframed: £270) / 2018
Tug-of-War – Etching / 30x40cm / 12 editions / £350 (Unframed: £270) / 2018
Playground Roundabout – Etching / 30x40cm / 12 editions / £350 (Unframed: £270) / 2018 Tightrope Walking – Etching / 30x40cm / 10 editions / £350 (Unframed: £270) / 2018
The Path of Eyes series
Red Dragon – Mixed media / 120x120cm / £3,900 / 2018 Seesaw – Mixed media / 60x90cm / £1,600 / 2018
Swing – Mixed media / 60x90cm / £1,600 / 2018
Memory
Mixed media / 155x155x155cm (HxWxD) / £200 per block (Total: 320 blocks: £64,000) / 2017-2019
Precious Memory
Screen-printed toilet rolls, framed / 100x140x13cm (HxWxD) / £6,000 (Unframed: £3,500) / 2018
All of these works can be made to commission, customised to your own journeys or memories.
For further information and press quality images please contact Chiara Williams
[email protected] | 07519646508
VESTIGES OF SEEING
‘Vestiges of Seeing’ is an updated body of work by Ilkwon Yoon, using printmaking techniques across 2D and 3D media to question permanence, memory and value, relating to his own personal childhood memories, in a way that the artist hopes is universally accessible.
Yoon often screen-prints on paper napkins and toilet paper, materials that are numerous, layered and disposable. Here, traditional screen-printing techniques (which are laborious to set up, but then easily reproduced) collide with mid-20th century Pop Art concerns about consumerism and the throwaway society, hint at the disappearing art of fore-edge painting (when an image is painted on the edges of a book's pages) and critique the very contemporary problem of not looking where we are going when our eyes are glued to a ‘phone screen.
Adopting very human tendencies to make sense of our world - stacking, layering, ordering, filtering and re- membering - Yoon encourages us to pay attention to the things we miss in our daily lives and invites us to look to the empty spaces in our memories. He reminds us how insensitive we have become to our surroundings and he asks us to slow down. Radically, the work is perhaps about ‘slow looking’, which, in the context of an art fair, is pretty challenging.
‘The Movement in the Space’ is a series of delicate etchings describing the movement of playground equipment. Although derived from the artist’s own childhood memories, by silently re-animating the objects and figures in this way, he summons and imprints the past onto the present, inviting us to recall our own playground memories.
‘The Path of Eyes’ is a series of mixed media works addressing the value of the unnoticed visual information that surrounds us on daily journeys. From that which is routinely missed, to that which is literally overlooked, we are all so busy getting somewhere that we are often not present in the moment. The artist retraced a journey in South Korea, from Seoul to Donghae, to find his old primary School. Yoon took hundreds of photographs along the journey, wherever his gaze happened to pause or linger, accumulating them into a fastidious mosaic of smaller images laid over the central image of his ‘memorable place’. The work echoes the journey itself; by elevating the ‘unimportant’ collateral scenes into the same field as the consciously viewed subject, Yoon asserts their value, endowing what we miss with as much significance as that which we gaze upon in order to remember.
‘Memory’ is the title of the large sculptural work in the middle of the stand and it focuses on the characteristics of objects comprised of layers. Napkins, stacked in countless ply, are quickly used and forgotten everyday objects. The screen-printed images derive from photographs of the artist’s primary school classmates. Yoon reproduces the faces of those remembered, partly remembered and completely forgotten, to communicate the process of fading memory. Although we may have forgotten most of our classmates, the clarity of our memory depends on our attachment to the individual, and the artist is interested in the disparities between these vestiges of memory.
‘Precious Memory’ is printed directly onto the fore-edge of fifty-four toilet rolls, and then framed. A toilet roll is composed of hundreds of sheets of paper and is an apt medium for expressing fading memories by virtue of the way in which the sheets are unceremoniously consumed in everyday life. By framing the work, the artist attempts to stop the inevitable, to protect the fragile surface and give permanence to the legacy of his own precious memory.
LIST OF WORKS
The Movement in the Space series
Seesaw – Etching / 80x120cm / 5 editions / £700 (Unframed: £450) / 2018
Swing – Etching / 30x40cm / 12 editions / £350 (Unframed: £270) / 2018
Korean Jumping Game – Etching / 30x40cm / 12 editions / £350 (Unframed: £270) / 2018 Skateboard – Etching / 30x40cm / 12 editions / £350 (Unframed: £270) / 2018
Tug-of-War – Etching / 30x40cm / 12 editions / £350 (Unframed: £270) / 2018
Playground Roundabout – Etching / 30x40cm / 12 editions / £350 (Unframed: £270) / 2018 Tightrope Walking – Etching / 30x40cm / 10 editions / £350 (Unframed: £270) / 2018
The Path of Eyes series
Red Dragon – Mixed media / 120x120cm / £3,900 / 2018 Seesaw – Mixed media / 60x90cm / £1,600 / 2018
Swing – Mixed media / 60x90cm / £1,600 / 2018
Memory
Mixed media / 155x155x155cm (HxWxD) / £200 per block (Total: 320 blocks: £64,000) / 2017-2019
Precious Memory
Screen-printed toilet rolls, framed / 100x140x13cm (HxWxD) / £6,000 (Unframed: £3,500) / 2018
All of these works can be made to commission, customised to your own journeys or memories.
For further information and press quality images please contact Chiara Williams
[email protected] | 07519646508
Ilkwon Yoon | www.yoonilkwon.com
Ilkwon Yoon (b. Incheon, South Korea) studied at the Hong-Ik University (Printmaking, BFA), Seoul, South Korea and is currently at the Royal College of Art, London, studying for an MA in Print. He has had solo exhibitions at EK Art Gallery and ART SPACE POP Gallery, both in Seoul, Korea, and has participated in group exhibitions and art fairs in South Korea, Japan, France, and the UK. He has won prizes for his graduation exhibition, a Korean print contest, and most recently, the 2018 SOLO Award.
Ilkwon Yoon (b. Incheon, South Korea) studied at the Hong-Ik University (Printmaking, BFA), Seoul, South Korea and is currently at the Royal College of Art, London, studying for an MA in Print. He has had solo exhibitions at EK Art Gallery and ART SPACE POP Gallery, both in Seoul, Korea, and has participated in group exhibitions and art fairs in South Korea, Japan, France, and the UK. He has won prizes for his graduation exhibition, a Korean print contest, and most recently, the 2018 SOLO Award.
