Sinn & Leffers - Hannover,2008

Sung MinHwa’s work

-Manu Park.

Director of NJP Artcenter.

 

MinHwa Sung reproduces her drawings in digital medium as if you would listen to a song originally recorded in LP disk, but now transferred to MP3 or CD. However, the reproduced drawing of MinHwa Sung, with helps of digital technology, is transformed into various materials and medium, and obtains a totally new life. The living space around the artist herself –sometimes a place around or in area where she could reach by taking a walk from her house or through it’s far away from but a place around a hosting house of her old friends – is drawn very slowly and precisely. However, when enlarging, dividing, or editing the imaging of the original drawing which was digital- scanned the speed of copying or saving is exceedingly prompt. Especially the speed of drawing by hand is the one that makes a huge contrast with the speed of printing the digitally processed images. For instance, as to laser engraving of the images on the wooden panel, which she used, the speed of “drawing in lines” is absurdly fast. In this case the principal of drawing on a wooden panel is to burn in a surfaces of wood, or a wood skin by laser beam, so the speed control is crucial because otherwise it might lead to the unexpected effects of burning a wood panel to make a deep scratch on it.

 

 

Her drawings which are flatbed printed or engraved on, compressed foam boards, wood panels, fabric, and so on are sometimes positioned in a straight line on a long wall.

The viewers get the feeling of taking a slow walk through this extended arrangement of the works in the same manner as the artist who slowly and meticulously observes and draws the represented scenes. The artist displays the 8 m 50 Cm long work which she produced based on the drawing she made as a record of Sinn Leffers department store right before its closing, on the show windows of the building entrances. The individual canvases produced in 30Cm wide and 130 Cm  long, are put up on the show window wall in more or less rhythmically different heights, so the passerby on the  front of the department store with their light steps could remember the inner view of vanished department store.