Tell me a little bit about your background. Born in South Korea, I received my MA in Studio Art at New York University in 1997. I currently live and work in New York City. My drawings have been exhibited in South Korea, the United States, and Europe  

How did you become interested in art? As far as I can remember I love to draw and paint, and also look at various visual images since I was little.

Before becoming an installation artist, what other mediums did you use? Cut canvas to spread on space, wire to draw in space, draw on papers with ink and pen (still do) and performance as well. By the way, I wouldn’t call myself an installation artist. To me the masking tape drawing that people call Installation, I call it Space Drawing or Sculptural Drawing.

Where did you get the inspiration to use black masking tape to create artwork? I found masking tape after my search of seeking directness of the action ‘to draw’ and one day the material masking tape pops in my mind. My work is “sculptural drawing” because it incorporates two-dimensional drawing on three-dimensional structures. 

How does it compare to painting? I felt as if ink was coming out from my fingers when I first used masking tape to draw directly on space. 

What does art mean to you? My way of being in the world. Sharing my vision with others.

How would you describe your artwork? My drawings are born through the communion between the material and the spiritual, wherein my own self is constantly reflected emptying itself.  

Tell me about your exhibit “Enfolding 280 Hours” and about the process. I visualized an unseen space and time that existed only in our imagination and subconscious realm. When I first visited the Brooklyn Museum to research the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Gallery, where I would install Enfolding 280 Hours, I noticed that the space was like a square enfolding a circle with two concentric opposing circles of energy. On the basis of these initial impressions, I created lines I envisioned in the space and the direction in which they would flow. During the installation process,which began two months before the exhibition opened, I used rolls of masking tape to create the sculptural drawing. Estimating that it would take 280 hours to install the work, I titled it Enfolding 280 Hours. Audience interaction is an essential component of the work. I wasinspired by the diversity of the Brooklyn Museum’s visitors and its mission to act as a bridge between the 500,000 collections from and the experience of each visitor. These sculptural drawings respond to the existing architecture and visually represented the energy that I feel in a space. 

You spent 280 hours working on this exhibit. How did it make you feel when you were taking it down?  When my series of site specific masking tape drawings are taken down… It is the moment that an art piece becomes waste. It starts from empty space and ends as waste when its time comes, like our limited life. It begins from nothing but ends different from before because of the marks(trace) it leaves. 

What do you want to convey to people who see your pieces? I would expect the viewers experiences and encounters, his or her subconscious space and time, finding oneself breathing within the new pictorial reality.

Who is your audience?  My work is an open invitation to everyone, whoever walks in to my new pictorial world.

Do you consider art your hobby or your profession? Profession

What is your typical day like? Go to studio with my lunch box in the morning, after work go exercise on the way home and take care of email and other computer related work at night. 

What are your hobbies? Play piano, listen to music, taking walka, enjoying a piece of cake or cookies while sipping coffee with good friends.

Describe your perfect day. Get up early in the morning, Breakfast outside of a cafe on a sunny day, go to work at my studio, focus on a current project (sometimes I have sudden visits from a good friend of mine for coffee in the late afternoon), a light exercise and go home and have warm home made food. Check up on emails in a relaxing manner. Take a shower and sleep tight. Too mundaine? Haha.. 

What are your plans for the future regarding your artwork and installations? 

I’m planning on few site specific projects in UK,  Korea and New York.

Interviewed by Mukta Mohan, featured in Issue No.5.

(Source: titlemagazine.net)

Posted 9 months ago with 6 notes
Tags: art interview  installation  sun kwak