holy & fragile                                        

Hyo-In Byun-Wiesner - painting & photography

Sept 9 /2008 - Nov 15/2008

 

´breeze´ 2008  2m x 1m, scratching on photo

Living in Berlin today, the korean artist Hyo-In Byun-Wiesner studied in Stasbourg, Paris and Seoul and is represented by galleries in Berlin, Seoul and New York.

She developped a diverse but consistent work on different medias: photography, film, painting, installation. The fragility and holyness of nature is a strong topic - not only confined to its religious or ecological meanings. On the contrary Byun-Wiesner deals with profound and existential experiences between the holy and the profane, the natural and the artificial, the abstract and the concrete, painting and photography, sanity and morbidity, inner and outer spaces.

In two big works of photography she experiences the holyness and fragility of nature in a manifest way.´breeze´shows wild growing jungle, which is covered by a fine system of lines following the wavelike structures of trees and bushes, capturing the blowing of the wind but also establishing a counterpart. Photography is accompanied by a second layer: scratches revealing the normally hidden, coloured layers of the photographic paper.

Experiencing the world by scratching off the surface puts a link to another project: ´mind of hand´, a 16mm film from 1995. Biological gifts like palmlines are confronted with the human will to change the given. The lines of a human palm are litterally run over by moving lines scratched directly into the filmmaterial.
 Innergie 2008, 1m x 2m, scratching on photo, gouache

Seven paintings like sacred icons worship the eternity of colours and hoizontal lines, earth and sky touching each other.

                              

spring whisper 2007                                                           passion 2007                                             pigment & wax on paper, 56,6 x 100,4 cm                           pigment & wax on paper, 57,6 x 99,4 cm

There is also an art edition of the two big photographs ´breeze´and ´Innergie´ available (20 cm x 40 cm).

For the finissage the artist will present a new installation, that actually is being created at the moment by the artist and by interaction with the visitors. Byun-Wiesner by hand cut out hundreds of translucent paper leaves that cover the floor of the gallery. They shrink with the moisture in the air and get under the shoes of the people coming in. The paper leaves nearly live the life of their natural sisters. Only because of a slight slip from naturality to artificiality the (wo)manmade leaves reflect the drama of growing, dying, holyness and fragility even more. The visitor can catch a last glimpse of wonderfully coloured autumn leaves before they get wasted  - like they normally do: under our shoes.

But .... the artist will rescue them through a new piece of art.




 Installation in the gallery, autumn leaves and translucent paper leaves, 2008