Seo Young Lee, News Writer

Seniors drew upon inspiration to create artworks for their largest exhibition in their school career. Themes like growth, memory, dreams and fantasies, unconsciousness, desires, and identity were the themes surrounding the DP Year 2 seniors for the GSIS DP Art Graduate Exhibition.

Human ‘Need’ was the theme of Eric Lee’s artwork, who started producing art in ninth-grade. He said he wanted to express human needs and emotions in an abstract manner and also in 3D or 2D form.

His art is not only about human expression, he said, “there are also environmental or physiological aspects in my art work.” He continued, “It’s kind of weird, but I tried to express nonliving things as a living being”. His inspirations were derived from famous contemporary artist Damien Hirst and William Kentridge. Damien Hirst often expresses very conceptual themes involving feelings of love or death. Eric recommends ‘Guilty’, which he described as “really dark and deep” and hopes people will look at this artwork more than his others.

Soichiro Tagami, who has been doing art for four years, wanted to show the unconsciousness of humans. He said, “people always hide their feelings and thoughts inside.” He continued, “there are fragments that show their hidden feelings, such as fake smiling.”

Since he was curious about humans emotions and was hugely inspired by a Spanish artist who made a scenario of the unconscious world, he decided his theme as “unconsciousness”. As most artists do, expressing his purposes through art was difficult, but he hopes viewers will recognize his intention. Unlike other students, Soichiro’s goal of the DP art exhibition was to actually relay what he thinks about emotions to the audience, not just to submit his final artworks for university.

Tor Utoksiri seemed to try to remove his doubts and give certainty to his uncertain future. His theme was about dreams and fantasies. His inspiration was very exceptional which was his unclearness of his future, instead of a specific artist. He said, “I want to know what I want to do in the future, so I decided to do something that predicts my future.” He wanted to predict his guaranteed future and he wanted to express happiness.

Jungmin Kim’s theme was a little different from his peers in that his work was highly conceptual in nature. His theme was identity, because he wanted to better express himself in a more clear manner. He decided his theme would be identity because he believed one of the forms art can take is “self-reflection.” His idea of identity was inspired by his own experiences. The meaning of this DP art show was somewhat bright and future-oriented because he said “It’s [DP art show] a beginning of a new life.” He also said, “My goal for this DP art show is to see how my art looks in other people’s eyes to reassure myself.”

Sarah Hyebin Kim’s theme was growth, and she tried to imply emotions about teenager’s depression, stress, and growth. She, as a teenager has her own struggles. She said “my family is a typical Korean family, but they still prefer to be free, like they don’t give pressure on academics. However, because I was born in a Korean environment, through news and daily life, I have already seen that Korean teenagers get more stress from their academics and their families. Well, the teenage period is the most important for every single person and everyone gets stressed out from their academics, so I thought that emotion can be shown through various ways in art.”

Sarah always get inspired by art museums and art fairs. She said, “I was really inspired by how different artists show their intentions through different art styles. If there’s a portrait, then each artist has their taste in art.” She recommended ‘Desire’, one of her artworks which has outlines of hands with watercolor flowing down from the top on a wooden board. She added that it expressed “social issues”.

Stephanie Kim moves alongside two kinds of dreams. She said, “You can have more diverse branches that spread out when expressing dreams, because there are two definitions for dreams-an actual dream when you sleep and then when you dream about becoming something in the future.” She continued, “most of the time, I wanted to express the way I see the world, or how I want the world to be.” She said she tried to make her work “ambiguous” so that she could give the audience an opportunity to interpret the work themselves.

She was most confident of the four artworks, in her series called ‘Lucid Dream’. She said “It’s the one with line drawings, artificial flowers underneath it, and a bunch of guys. I want others to try to figure out what I meant because it’s hard to connect the title and the image.”

Si Won Lee’s overall theme was about her memory, she wanted to express herself. She was anxious about deciding what kind of media she would use and how she would create her art work. She said, “I expect people to say something good about my art, because I did work hard for two years. If people say like ‘Oh, that art is not good.’, it will be kinda sad.”

The opening of the DP Art Exhibition began on Apr. 4 and the exhibition runs from 9a.m. – 6p.m. from Apr. 5 to 10 at Gyeonggi Provincial Center for Education Welfare in Suwon City.