Separation and Integration
My paintings are the result of a process of investigation into my personal cultural heritage – a journey which explores the effect on my own identity of being born into one culture, then subsequently being adopted into another very different one thousands of miles away. Using source material derived from my personal archive of family albums and landscape images of Swede
n and Korea from the Internet, I begin by creating collages and other material experimental pieces - developing an amalgam of an experienced life and lost experiences. Through the activity of ripping (separation) and reassembling (integration) the images into collages, the psychological process of piecing together who I am and where I come from, is activated. Just like fragments of an identity are glued together by a variety of experiences, the jagged collage is taking shape. These collages then become the source for further material experiments - translating these collages into paintings, allows me to increase the personal element and add reference. The material processes, variation of paint applications and use of strong colours are analogous to my investigations into my past where words like nostalgia and memory are important. The paint is sitting on the surface, creating tension. While the resin encapsulates the time, whether is it the past, present or the future, or a combination of them, the cavity, whenever it is present, communicates between the past and the present, the interior with the exterior and the psychological with the physical. The painting process allows me to expand the potential of my ideas – reducing the overly specific imagery to something I hope is more universally accessible. My personal story is of course core, since it is what motivated my investigations into notions of identity, but I do feel there are also far reaching aspects to what I am saying that I want to address. Influences include Candice Breitz’s Factum series which explore the concept of identity in relation to the community, René Magritte’s play on illusion and reality, John Kᴓrner’s painterly colour combinations, the way Tom LaDuke’s different painterly applications create a tension between memory and the present, the mood that Willem Sasnal’s paintings exude, John Stezaker’s play on perception in his collages, and Gerhard Richter’s search of various methods of expression.
