Many people are into art these days. A smart phone in a person’s hand is an artistic tool. Anyone can be a photographer using their smartphone as the camera, and anyone could become a painter using smartphone apps to draw pictures with just a few finger swipes. Art is not so far away. Let’s think about the primal art, that is, cave painting. Art is an expression of human creative skill and imagination, usually in a visible form.
Now, I would like to introduce an artist who makes images with only a small smartphone at his disposal. H.Hong learned pure painting but built his career as a professional photographer after becoming fascinated by photographs. However, his recent works are considered a new genre combining both painting and photographs. They might look like mundane works but they turn out to be attractive pieces indeed.
Sound of Spring Pipe, 2013
The work of H.Hong is simple: he takes pictures anytime using a smart phone and draws on those pictures using an app. H.Hong introduces a new concept of art to today’s generation. He even displays a special ability so that the audience could appreciate his pieces both with their eyes and mind’s eye.
Fishing, 2013
“There is no distinction between space, things and emptiness so I draw as I see.” -H.Hong
As the artist said, he takes pictures of the scene he likes, finds its hidden story and draws ‘as he sees,’ Going beyond the three-dimensional concept of things and space, he shows that the emptiness is not the emptiness if it is seen with the mind’s eye. He has chosen painting as a way to express the life and energy that the emptiness contains. Through his photographs that represent the three-dimensional space and the two-dimensional painting, both of which are fiction that represent the reality, we find new insight about the ‘real world’ through the combination of the two, his photographs and painting. We get to see the world beyond world in which we know the images we see with our eyes, that we believed to be ‘real,’ are not actually images…
Spring, 2013
“As the world is living, it is full of stories. I just draw the stories of the world from a part of the world.” – H.Hong
The artist sees the extraordinary world of fantasy from the ordinary scenes that we negligently pass by in daily life. He expresses the gap by drawing cartoon-like images on photographs that change the reality. At the same time, he conveys that the two worlds are not different, but the same. He shows that the world is ‘living.’ The characters in his pictures are comfortably ‘resting’ and just exist ‘as they are.’
Spring Came. Please Open the Door, 2013
After having encountered a series of his artworks, I came up with a new habit of considering my surroundings at all times, even those I see every day. I imagine the story that might be hidden in the empty space and also recall a bear ringing a doorbell with a flower. I then realize that this world is living. My mind fills up with the warm light.
Flower Moving, 2013
H.Hong’s art pieces are not grand but plain and simple. They show the world we live ‘as we see, is as it is.’ His working style cleverly uses the technology that the world has given us. In this way, he conveys that art is around us all the time.
H.Hong’s Working tools
Fish Tree, 2013
Now is the generation that everyone creates and enjoys art. But if you expand your mind to see the world, you can see the ‘world beyond world’ that others cannot see and express it well indeed. I believe it would be possible when you escape from the frames, standards and habits that you now live.
