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2023. March VOL. 660
- 2023. March VOL. 660
- ENG
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2023. March VOL. 660
Walking into a café in Seoul, I noticed a few paintings showing cute characters, which I often see on Internet messengers. A close look at each work reveals that the paintings feature unique items that are not found in other ones. Artist Mina Jo used various waste items in creating these paintings, including small plastic wrappers, strings, facial masks, styrofoam and used coffee grounds.
‘Renewal’ is the theme that goes through all these paintings as a common thread. By definition, renewal means ‘revival’ or ‘making the old renewed’. With the belief that things that are thrown away after having been used can certainly be reborn as something beautiful, Jo incorporated waste as byproducts of modern society into her works.
“When I was thinking of a new work, a friend of mine advised me to visit a scrap metal treatment facility in Gyeongju City. I was overwhelmed to see a pile of pressed scrap metals, which towered above me. This sight left a deep impression and inspired me to embark on my new work immediately.”
The cross section of the scrap metal pressed into cubes has its own unique artistic beauty.
Jo describes the beauty on a canvas with acrylic paint, charcoal and conte, and uses coffee grounds to express the rustiness of scrap metal. Shedding light on heavy issues of waste that exist on the flip side of modern society that has gone through rapid growth, her paintings garnered the spotlight and were celebrated with the Grand Prize at the 2014 <Shilla Art Exhibition>.
According to her, “I studied children’s art in college and my early works were mainly realistic paintings featuring landscapes and natural objects. But my approach to how I design my work has changed a lot by working on this painting.”
‘The Age of Chaos’, the painting that won the Grand Prize at the exhibition is the first work on waste. A comment by Young-ho Kim, professor of art history at Chung-Ang University on her work read, “Scrap metal is not a tool for her to complain about reality or make a criticism of society, but rather acts as a symbol to mirror our lives, an archive of memories, and more importantly the source of artistic experiment.”
In 2014 when she won the Grand Prize at the <Shilla Art Exhibition>, news media was flooded with various political and social issues. In the midst of the challenging social circumstances, Mina Jo felt obligated to express her own views through her works, and has been keenly interested in environmental issues.
Since then, none of the waste thrown away on a daily basis has looked useless to her.
In her words, “Materials I use in my works are actual everyday waste that people throw away. If you take a close look at them, the surfaces of these materials are not smooth nor clean, but rather some of them are rough. I am looking for a diversity of materials by reusing daily waste that is quickly discarded after use.”
After she gained a renewed sense of self-confidence through the ‘Age of Chaos’, Jo expanded her research and experiments on waste, trying and adopting different approaches. The works she has created for the past ten years are categorized into three groups. <Renewal I> includes works in the early years of the period, which describes the surfaces of highly pressed scrap metals as they appear in real life. In the second series <Renewal II>, scrap metals were restructured in various different styles to create new images.
“I’ve been heavily inspired by scrap metals that give powerful impressions. I regularly visit the scrap metal treatment facility in Gyeongju to get new ideas and take photos. The image itself of scrap metals creates its own unique message, with my works getting great reviews from art critics.”
Images captured through the lenses of an artist give a glimpse of the time we live in. For her private exhibition held in the fall of 2022, Jo was cited in the artist’s note as saying, “The insatiable greed and desire of people living in this day and age create enormous amounts of waste every day, which lead to climate change and other environmental problems, which in turn cause serious social issues.”
“Resources are thrown away and they are considered useless and valueless when they have served their purpose. But they can be recreated into something else anew. Art touches our hearts by arousing and stimulating our five senses through various forms of media. Objects that are otherwise thrown away can be reused in art to capture our hearts and minds.”
In <Renewal III>, a collection of Jo’s latest works, she tweaked the images of popular characters including Wonder Woman, Superman and Kakao Friends, broadening the scope of interpretation. People often find it difficult to relate to paintings with strong formative elements, but the familiar characters in Jo’s paintings make her works easily accessible and approachable.
According to her, “People tend to be drawn to things that are pretty and cute in their own eyes. Previously, my works drew attention more from art enthusiasts than average people, but now, youths and children are getting more interested in my paintings.”
The characters in her paintings look different from their usual looks. Jo uses the characters to get her messages across to people about waste as byproducts of today’s industrial society as well as about consumption that is accelerating in the information society. It is a long and arduous process to transform waste into works of art because waste including plastic and styrofoam has been often contaminated or damaged, making it difficult to prepare the surfaces to be smooth and even. Nevertheless, she will relentlessly work with waste and look for new materials.
