Page 5 - 장혁동 개인전 2023. 9. 12 – 10. 29 쇼움갤러리

What is also particular about his works is that the entire color is lowly saturated and the dark gray color is gloomy

enough to cover the entire canvas. In a way, in the use of colors, the primary colors that he uses are completed with
very restrained colors. The gloomy and emotional colors and expressions of the artist arouse curiosity. At the same

time they allow us to think about what is inside the artist. It is clearly the inner language the artist gives us and the
message of the artist's gaze looking at the landscape. These emotional yet silent languages demand to see and

accompany lonely landscapes together.

In a way, the essential purpose of artist Jang Hyuk-dong's works are ultimately regarded as a spleen gaze at the things
seen and reflected in his life. Perhaps that is the expression of his life. Right here, the painter is the protagonist of life

and the observer of the landscape. At the same time he questions us. This is the life of a human being, no, the fate
and life of an artist. His art may be a self-portrait living as a lonely painter in a foreign land and a picture diary of

the artist's life. So, for him, painting is a way of life or a form of delivery rather than a tool to show beauty.

At the center of the message delivered by artist Jang is the search for the expressions of empty people living in this
era and their self-portraits. It is also a self-portrait of the existence of an artist, a human being who stays, disperses,

and loves within the landscape of my life. Painter Jang also said of his paintings as “the thrill of being remembered
as a child, ‘the twinkling of the dark night sky’…the struggles and dreaming self of a teenager.” This depicts the lonely

landscapes of a painter who contemplates life. The artist's sincere confession, "rather than pursuing flashy colors and
techniques, I tried to convey emotions through restrained colors and pure brush strokes," shows the artist's

aspirations as they are. In this way, Jang Hyuk-dong's paintings clearly show that a work of art is not to reproduce
what is visible, but to make what exists more visible to us.

In addition, artist Jang expresses the landscape of a lonely life in a foreign country where he lives as a stranger,

sometimes with a sense of tragedy. Just as Munch said, “I felt a great cry through nature,” Jang proves in his painting
Picasso’s famous saying, “Art comes through sorrow and pain.”

His paintings question us again, what is human life? What is art? This is the reason why his paintings make us

emotional, sometimes feel overwhelmed.

Kim Chong Geun (art critic)

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