Annette Hur: Willful Unknowing: and a KOREAN FOLK SONG

I see the space in paintings as an all-consuming visual battlefield. Like a sober yet disquieting drama being played out from the protagonist’s placement in the world. Embracing the vitality of the sensations, hyper color-filled large scale images flex between abstract and recognizable forms, such as a falling rabbit, flowers, butterflies or an ominous dark cloud.

 

-Annette Hur

Feb 3, 2019

I see an art in a dark room. I actually don’t know if it’s an art. I was dragged into the room somehow, don’t remember by who or why. I’m just going to call the thing ‘art’. The art is trying to show me something, but I can’t tell what it is. The art is a box, big enough to fit a dozen of bodies in. It looks so old, almost some kind of a relic. The top opens. I feel fear to look in. The shadows of figures in the room are watching me, waiting for me to look into the box. ‘I’m not going to look.’ Not because I am afraid of dead bodies or ghosts or..anything really. I just know there is something that I do not want to see in the box and maybe my heart will stop beating. Fear engulfs me and I look above instead. The wall where abstracted mountains-or just the profusion of green nature-are painted. This room is too dark! But the painting is also sunless. It is coarsely painted. My eyes are fixed on the painting but they imagine something else in an attempt to not think about the inside of the box. I never looked.

Jan 26, 2021

There is a hole in my body and I can feel it. I seek for love that I can give, I seek for love that I can get. It is a struggle because there is a hole in my body that only I know, and It stops me from laughing, it stops me from being full, it stops me from loving anything. Maybe I can die. All of a sudden, all I can think of is death; and I bump into you. YOU. I realize that all this time I thought I would stop thinking of death if I ever meet ‘YOU’ again. I was wrong. I want to die immediately. You seem to know what is in my mind. You know what I am thinking and I can not stand it. I want to cry but I can’t even cry. I run away from your reach-your unsympathetic effort- thinking that I am ready.