Although the works show encounters between Japanese culture and the Bible, which are from completely different backgrounds and opposite religious perspectives, I tried to deliver an ironic narrative that can be presented in a single scene of the canvas.
Kukwon Woo
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Kukwon Woo presents a biblical story as an East Asian idyll.
‘Breakfast on the Beach’ is a ukiyo-e inspired landscape, trading the motif of the snow-capped mountain for a village on a hill by the sea. The picturesque scene is framed by text on two sides in two scripts. The vertical hanzi text replicates the traditional signatures on a woodblock print, where a bible reference lies.
John 21 opens with the ‘Breakfast on the beach’ that gives this edition its title. In the biblical story, the resurrected Jesus miraculously fills the nets of his tired disciples, and cooks them fish by the Sea of Galilee. In Woo’s rendition, Jesus sits under a striped parasol. He is joined at the table by the strawberry-blonde toddler and white dog that recur in Woo’s paintings. Across the top, a verse from the passage beckons you to the feast in Woo’s looping roman script.
This endearing image of togetherness is printed in 13 layers, faithfully recreating the texture of Woo’s painting.
Kukwon Woo7 collaborationsKukwon Woo journeys through a world full of paradoxes drawing inspiration from every encounter. He synthesises these experiences into neo-expressionist paintings full of wit and wonder. He often paints children on heroic adventures or battling everyday tasks, accompanied by animal sidekicks and fairytale friends. These images are juxtaposed with text that ranges from comedic to philosophical. The result is sometimes absurd, like a pony reading decolonial theorist Franz Fanon (I Hate Mornings, 2020). Although he’s fluent in irony, his goal is to recreate the pure expression of a child “truly immersed in a moment – happiness, joy, anger, hate, jealousy, envy, weakness.”
To get closer to pure expression, Woo unlearned the habit of writing neatly. His messy script frames many of his canvases with phrases like “a baby is God’s opinion that life should go on” (Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love your tomorrow, 2021). At face-value, it expresses Woo’s excitement as a then father-to-be. However, the words betray their writer’s awareness of life cycles and religion, and therefore mortality and morality. While works like Rainbow is Illusion (2022) are overtly cynical, the lurking existential dread is always softened by the pastel colours and rag-doll texture of Woo’s painting. Like all good fabulists, he excels at the gentle push and pull between knowledge and innocence.
To get closer to pure expression, Woo unlearned the habit of writing neatly. His messy script frames many of his canvases with phrases like “a baby is God’s opinion that life should go on” (Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love your tomorrow, 2021). At face-value, it expresses Woo’s excitement as a then father-to-be. However, the words betray their writer’s awareness of life cycles and religion, and therefore mortality and morality. While works like Rainbow is Illusion (2022) are overtly cynical, the lurking existential dread is always softened by the pastel colours and rag-doll texture of Woo’s painting. Like all good fabulists, he excels at the gentle push and pull between knowledge and innocence.
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