JINA KWON

Jina Kwon’s solo exhibition at Space 776, titled “Dot & Line,” features paintings that immerse viewers in a pure, electrifying, and otherworldly visual style. Possibly drawing from the graphic influence of Roy Lichtenstein and the vibrant colors of Andy Warhol, Kwon arrives at a visual style that synthesizes the highbrow art of geometric abstraction with the lowbrow quality of pop art and graphic design.

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Curated by Julie Jang, Kwon’s exhibition features 19 paintings of varying sizes, but the differences in their dimensions are hard to discern from the digital images available online or on social media. Rather, viewers must see the works in the gallery to fully appreciate their scale and the degree of intimacy or monumentality. This is because the works are super flat in terms of imagery and have an infinitely scalable quality, like vector art, if one can overlook the texture of the canvas. With clean edges and a flat yet vibrant application of colors, what kind of philosophy or message does Kwon’s art convey? The artist claims that she simply wants to make art that is uplifting and eschews the deep meaning typically required of highbrow fine art. Is there more to be understood, and additional meaning to be excavated from her work, despite her insistence that it is purely formal?

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The title of the show may provide hints on how to unravel the mysterious meaning of her work. Dot and line are the two most fundamental visual elements of drawing and painting. It also relates to the title of Wassily Kandinsky’s book, “Point and Line to Plane” (1926). In the book, Kandinsky argues that the point represents an invisible entity, like a zero, which still possesses “human” qualities with inner significance (possibly of subjecthood). On the other hand, the line consists of the movement of points and is their “greatest antithesis” because the point is originally a stationary element. By naming her show “Point and Line,” Kwon engages with these concepts that have been the backbone of art for decades, if not centuries.

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To an Easterner, however, it has been argued that the subjecthood of the point is not possible without its being placed in a relationship or context with other points to form a line. This perspective is drastically different from the Western viewpoint that Kandinsky described—where the point is a stationary subject with human qualities, while the line is the movement (or perhaps the accumulation) of points, and thereby their antithesis. In Western thought, the subject can exist singularly in an empty Euclidean space; but to an Easterner, subjecthood is neither inherent nor guaranteed without its being contextualized within relationships with other subjects. Indeed, the self within us would not be what it is today without the inscription of events and influences from other subjects and beings around us.

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Why the zigzag? In physics, we see this pattern of movement when particles collide with one another. Kwon decides to paint the path of a single particle. It is the subject, the self, and the inner being. The other particles that collide with the subject-particle to shape its path into a zigzag pattern are invisible but implied. Ultimately, those other particles represent the beings we come into contact with throughout our lives. They could be parents, siblings, mentors, frenemies, or children. Kwon’s painting acts as a particle accelerator that detects those particles—those beings—which leave traces in our memories that shape our psyche and understanding of the world and our inner selves. Their invisibility on the surface of the canvas also implies either their departure or erasure from the main character’s life path. It highlights the most fundamental truth about existence: we may have numerous encounters with other beings; yet we are alone on our journey as subjects because we alone make the decisions that shape our circumstances and who we become in the future.

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This fundamental truth about beings—that there are many who come together and interact with one another to shape the world, yet each being is alone on their path from the past to the future—is a kind of contradiction and irony of the cosmos.

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The burden of existence goes beyond just the challenges of life. Its most difficult aspect is the fact that subjects are alone in their decision-making, in how they exercise free will. This is the very same reason why people make art: to create a community and shared dialogue that ultimately translates into a communal subjecthood or a collective consciousness of some kind. It is a powerful reminder that Kwon has captured subconsciously through her choices on the canvas.