About Linked Views

Art Space DA:MDAA is pleased to present Minsun Ji‟s first solo New York exhibition at K&P Gallery in New York. Minsun Ji, a Minhwa artist, has also curated her own solo exhibition. She turns the entire gallery space into a single piece of art filled with motifs and symbols of blessing, aspiration and wealth by the eyes of the tiger.
Minhwa literally refers to a Korean folk painting based on the aspiration to the blessed life such as longevity, fame, and wealth. The painting is composed of coded topics and objects. The exhibition ‘Linked Views’ focuses on interpreting the symbols ‘blessing’ and ‘aspiration’ by eyes of the tiger, and conveying those meanings to viewers. Minhwa features subjects such as tiger, phoenix, bat, dragon, fish, pomegranate, duck, lotus, crane and so forth. Each of those subjects conveys success, birth, longevity, peace, wealth and achievement, etc. That is why Minhwa is also referred to as a reading picture in a sense that viewers decode meanings of subjects and symbols contained in the paintings. The general theme of the genre would be the ‘blessing’ to people.
The artist has selected a few of the most frequently used symbols: tiger, dragon, bat, fish, and duck throughout the Korean art history. They are selected, adapted, reinterpreted, and newly created in different perspectives from the original. Tiger, especially the main icon of this exhibition, is believed to prevent us from calamities and invite the blessing as a patron saint in Korea. She borrows the tiger’s view as the reinterpreting point, letting the imagination run wild.
The hope of living a blessed life is not only of Korea, but also a desire of all around the world. By depicting and sharing this universal wish through art, the artist believes the viewer and the other viewer, or the viewer and herself can communicate and form a relationship despite the different languages we speak. As you follow the eye of the tiger one by one, the whole gallery space turns into a single piece of art. Minsun Ji wishes that the viewers are immersed in this body of works full of blessing.
Last but not the least; the viewers will also be fascinated realizing the combination of the aesthetics of the folk paintings – neglected three dimensional and atmospheric perspectives – and the contained meanings.

Minsun Ji ‘s State of Mind

심상(心象)을 떠올리며 – 지민선

“I am a Minhwa artist from South Korea. Minhwa , a Korean folk painting , has neither been recognized as an independent art genre nor been highly appreciated in Korea due to the fact that the same and/or similar subjects or motifs were often copied over and over again by many artists. In the beginning, I thought that I also had to copy my paintings in the same way many other artists have done. It was not very challenging for me to paint similar things repeatedly. It didn’t motivate me enough to copy the same objects as my ancestors had done in the past. I came to have an urge to express my thoughts when painting Minhwa by doing it in a little bit different way from others.
I am not good at writing. I have never been trained to be a good writer. I don’t have a great ambition to share with people to be honest. I would rather want to interpret and express things that we are familiar with in my Minhwa paintings, which are full of blessing and aspiration in a modern style with my own viewpoint. I would follow where my brush leads me and where my imagination takes me.”