Absence and Presence

‘Two love trees’ by Ran Hwang, 2009 (buttons, pins, panel)

Continuing our search for ‘art in the ordinary’ our focus this week is on Absence and Presence a series of works created by Ran Hwang a Korean-born artist working in New York, who creates intricate and poetic installations.

She is best known for her wall sculptures that make use of common objects like buttons and crystals pinned directly onto the wall of the gallery. 

‘Dreaming of joy’ by Ran Hwang, 2008 (buttons, pins on wooden panel, stainless steel)

Detail of artwork

The process is extremely time consuming and repetitive manual work, which is a form of meditative practice that helps her find inner peace. For the first type of work, pins are used to hold buttons onto the surface to form a silhouette image, or to disintegrate such image. No adhesive is used so that buttons are free to stay and move, which implies the genetic human tendency to be irresolute. The second group of work consists of connecting massive number of pins with yards of thread to occupy a negative space of the presented image. Here, threads serve as a metaphor for connection and communication between unlinked human relations. 

Detail of artwork

Hwang’s work has been described as inviting ’the viewer to engage in multiple readings of emptiness and existence, of attempting to reach the state of enlightenment and fulfillment through the conscious emptying of one’s mind and spirit’.

‘Garden of light’ by Ran Hwang, 2007 (pins, glass bowl, video on plexi-glass)

Her works were recently displayed at the India Art Summit 2011 and were pure visual delight.