Ran Hwang, Using Common Materials to Create Uncommon Murals

Korean artist Ran Hwang uses buttons, pins, and beads to create enormous murals of birds and cherry blossom trees.

In her words:

My immense wall installations are extremely time consuming and repetitive manual work. This is a form of meditative practice that helps me find my inner peace. Pins are used to hold buttons onto the surface to form a silhouetted image, or to disintegrate such image. No adhesive is used so the buttons are free to stay and move, which implies the genetic human tendency to be irresolute. I use buttons because they are common and ordinary, like the existence of human beings.

I create large icons such as a Buddha or a traditional vase, using materials from the fashion industry. The process of building large installations are time consuming and repetitive and it requires manual effort which provides a form of self-meditation. I hammer thousands of pins into a wall like a monk who, facing the wall, practices Zen.

I think that the choice to use these materials to create figures such as birds is stunning–the way that she creates them make them look as if they are about to take flight, an amazing conclusion to make when you see the buttons up close (see here). Perhaps her zen-like creative state is how she truly achieves this.

• Art
• Art History
• Birds
• Buddha
• Buttons
• Cherry Blossom Trees
• Contemporary Art
• existence
• Korea
• Korean
• Modern Art
• Pins
• Ran Hwang
• Zen