gallery joeun

Many artists attempt to create works by encountering new materials, finding stimulation, or colliding strongly with something. Or, when artists aim to achieve highly individual works, they search for and rely on their past memories. Citing the countless works of various forms that artists produce, scholars propose the hypothesis that “memory” has a significant impact on an artist's identity.


Plato, who first mentioned the concept of “memory,” said that we humans can perceive the original form of an ideal — something that does not exist in reality — because we have a “memory” of that ideal. However, his proposal is evaluated to be very superficial. Afterward, René Descartes overlooked memory because it accompanied inaccuracy and claimed that the self was a “substance” utterly unrelated to the memory. Then, David Hume (1711-1776) came and raised objections to Descartes’ concepts and resumed establishing theories about memory. Hume, widely recognized for his accomplishment of bringing experientialism to perfection, is also famous for being the philosopher who related memory to human identity. In his research on this matter, one can read his following logic: “The perception of impressions remains in our minds to become ideas, and among them, the ones kept for being vivid and powerful are memory. The imagination, however, operates independently of that vividness. Therefore, unlike memory, the imagination is not bound by the same order and form of the fundamental impression. Imagination is that which freely plays with ideas.”


On the other hand, Henri-Louis Bergson (1859-1941), a posterity of Hume, described memory as the spiritual movement that extends the past to the present moment during all the times spiritual life unfolds. As to the memory remembered by the repetitions taking place in the past and the present, he distinguished them into “habitual memory” and “pure memory,” the latter referring to memories that are unconscious and profound. His concept of memory refers to all the experiences we naturally encounter in our daily lives and remember as history, which then emerge in the form of images, which he refers to as “souvenir-images.” These souvenir-images oscillate between the present and the past, and memories from the past that are useful in the current situation are said to naturally emerge from the realistic consciousness.


Before her identity as an artist, Sung Yeon-Hwa is also a human being. Thus, she carries memories of the past within her unconsciousness, as per Bergson, and strives to preserve past pure memories in beautiful states. In addition to this, Sung Yeon-Hwa, as an artist, constantly shuttles back and forth between the past and the present, and she ceaselessly repeats her effort to bypass beautiful memories beyond obsession and transform pure memories into works of art. She takes the beautiful memories she had with her parents and elevates them to memories more beautiful than the memories through her works, and this is a feat that she could only achieve as an artist. And, likely, the pasts that will come in her future would be waiting for her as even more beautiful memories. In her process of creating a work, Sung Yeon- Hwa wields the brush, gathers concentration in a short amount of time to enter a state of oblivion, and creates a brushmark with a single movement of the brush. The pleasure of this linear brushmark is characteristic of her and completes her identity, another distinction that comes from the “habitual memories” of her past.

The desire to achieve more in one’s studio work and the psychological pressure to transcend oneself are the most painful ordeals to be experienced by the majority of artists. When the psychological pressure to transcend one’s current art becomes excessive or overwhelming, it can cause more severe confusion. However, Sung Yeon-Hwa continues with self-cultivation — knowing when to let go and when to lower oneself. She visits Buddhist temples to practice self-cultivation, and the visual stability she feels in those places is enhanced by the religious and philosophical contemplation emanating in their air and light, allowing one to learn the art of emptying oneself. While doing so, Sung Yeon-Hwa comes face to face with herself from a very distant past, when she is sitting under the eaves of a hanok. The physical and emotional similarity felt between the Buddhist temple in the present, and the hanok in the past are sufficient mediums for approaching one’s past self. As Hume mentioned, such past memories are linked to imagination. At these points where memory and present connect with each other, Sung moves her brush, not out of a strong desire for lines, but rather in a practice to simplify the lines. Her works reach completion through this process and are linked through serious dialogues with such things.

If Sung Yeon-Hwa’s previous works were like droplets of water bouncing off the eaves of a hanok, the works presented here are like hanoks seen from a distance after the rain — tile-roofed houses nestled peacefully in a mist that gently covers the natural scenery. The lines placed upon the canvas with utmost concentration are restrained to the maximum, and her works aspire to become one with the surface that embosoms the line. The individual elements do not fluctuate and, instead, blend together calmly and harmoniously. Sung Yeon-Hwa captures the present from her times in the past, and she repeats the process of turning back time and cramming those times into today. However, even if this practice boils down to a methodology through which she achieves happiness in her life, it undoubtedly remains the identity evident in her works and also her identity as an artist.

Cheong Jong Hyo, Chief Curator at the Busan Museum of Art