Hwang Young Sung and Bae Young Jin at Parsons School of Design

Art in America, June, 2003 by Richard Vine

Merging tradition with modernism, and art with craft, Korean artist Hwang Young Sung and clothing designer Bae Young Jin joined forces recently in a collaborative show at Parsons School of Design. The senior Hwang (b. 1941) contributed paintings, metal reliefs, objects, cut-paper works and ceramics, all utilizing a lexicon of folk-based graphic forms which Bae (b. 1956) translated into stitched, appliqued and cutout elements of garments which boldly update indigenous Korean styles, materials and colors.

Hwang's formal vocabulary comprises a wide range of cartoony shapes, halfway between depictions and abstracted signs, representing aspects of peasant life and lore: ox, magpie, tree, duck, tiger, etc. A great many of these quasi-pictograms refer to the beloved chogajip, the thatched adobe hut that was a mainstay of rural architecture in Korea for centuries. Hwang arrived at his visual repertoire after a conversion of sorts from his earlier allegiance to art Informel. In the 1970s he was influenced by the New Village Movement fostered by president Park Chung Hee in an attempt to bring collectivist renewal to some 16,600 hamlets. To this day, Hwang remains an advocate of "peasant" values, including dedication to family and home, that he considers universal.

This social conservatism has not kept Hwang from artistic experimentation. His pervasive use of pure colors--especially blue, white, red and black--and of an extended grid structure creates a neo-Pop, advertising-like accessibility, while honoring more venerable sources such as the 500 statues of Buddha at Jeungshim Temple (each different, all equal, reflecting the myriad aspects of one unified being). His 3-D silicone-on-canvas "candy paintings" in bright, sweet colors, along with his painted stainless-steel spheres (resembling Christmas tree ornaments) and mass-produced dishware, bridge the worlds of art and commerce.

As an independent designer, Bae is, of course, also adept in the realm of business and swiftly responsive to contemporary urban tastes. Nevertheless, her pieces--made of silk, cotton or silk organza--drape and flow naturally, retaining a traditional regard for the "living" quality of raw, unfinished materials. Some are based on antique models such as the kimonolike hanbok; even these, however, knowingly violate old social- and marital-status color codes. Others designs are of-the-moment and daring, featuring exposed midriffs, gapingly stapled or safety-pinned closures, ragged hems, multiple external pockets or rough-edged Hwang cutouts--the most striking in textured, undyed heavy-weight cotton.

In the show's prime synthesizing gesture, Bae constructed a 12-foot-high tent dress surrounded by giant pillows embroidered with several of Hwang's figures. In the interior space, at once sexualized (literally under a skirt) and cozily secure, visitors could contemplate the exhibition's titular "dialogue"--not just between old and new, or one medium and another, but between two viewers of the generative center. Here modern female allure, displayed on fashion runways or city streets, merged with a tribute to the timeless, womblike home.