The artist, Choi, Sung-won, has tried to go through breaking down the boundary between brightness and darkness for a long time while painting.
He finally figured out what it was out of endless hard work and it was the tusche that was a shadow. Therefore, the dark is an infinite location of the new beginning and it has a depth of inner space. Eventually, the artist is standing up “there” with a blurry boundary when having the red inspiration that arouses in his cheeks in which the daybreak would be started.
A feeling like I am ‘there’
It is an oil painting, but it contains the emotions of ink/wash painting by Choi, Sung-won's ‘There’ series. It looks like the painting is about the elegant appearance of a specific area, but in reality, it is just an image of an imaginary place by the artist. Fragments of childhood and inspirational spaces have been collected that are making it seem like a town in the mountains of Europe or a rustic mountain village in Korea.
That is why his work must be understood with the heart. The harmony of the skillful brush strokes and the restrained colors revealed in every work is very simple and intense. Although it is an oil painting, it doesn’t seem to be like an oily painting. The thick and heavy oil feeling was totally removed but instead of it, the clear energy of the colors was replaced and has been emphasized with a concentration technique commonly used in ink painting. The partially mixed black ink here also creates this new atmosphere.
It's not lavish, but the harmony of color and the layout of the face are bold. Without the bulkiness and weight of the thickly painted black, it could have looked light. In this way, the restrained composition and creativity allow us to gauge the artist's aesthetics for objects. With the motif of lyricism obtained from everyday landscapes, it presumes several emotional impressions, but it contains an ideological space that harmonizes with traditional values and modernity through the creativity of expression styles.
