Korean artist, Jaena Kwon’s work is concerned with painting components and how painting space is constructed. She treats painting as an image objectified or embedded in physical material. Folding and sanding is a way of expanding the surface and support structure, the logic of dimensions, and psychological effects from the mixture of shape, color, and texture.
Kwon has a background in origami and pop-up book making. This impacts her painting: a two- dimensional surface can be folded and pop up as a three-dimensional form.
Her works are always solid colors which gives more chance to notice differences in surface topography, gradual edge changes, boundaries from layered surfaces, subtle indentations, and textures are used to make the viewer examine the work’s shape and texture closely.
Her current focus is on creating painting where each work, with its different rhythm and character, can work as a painted patch, with the wall space acting as a canvas.
Kwon has exhibited extensively in the U.S. and Korea. She has a B.F.A. and M.F.A. from Seoul National University in Korea. She also has an M.F.A. from Yale University School of Art.
