Kiwon Hong is a visual artist whose works reflect upon the relationship between the body, memory, space, and movement. His work encompasses video, performance, installation, and drawing.
Hong’s work was inspired by his conception of places like Disneyland as gallery spaces where machines and rides are a type of moving sculpture. More recently, his work has expanded to include our entire society and environment as an open gallery where one can examine the relationship between space, body, and memory.
His work has also been deeply influenced by the memory of suffering from paralysis of the lower half of body after a horse riding accident, as well as the process of recovery.
The result of this is that the work is in a form that experiments with the mechanical and organic, the static and dynamic, the functional and non-functional, and the regular and irregular.
The project that Hong will develop during Bilbao Arte explores the ambiguous and unintelligible sphere of social memory or culture, the individual and his individuality, the boundaries between the individual and its external world, and the hierarchy between given things and accepted things.
Kiwon Hong (b.1978, Seoul) lives and works in Seoul, South Korea. He graduated from BFA Chelsea College of Art & Design, University of The Arts London (2009).
Hong held his solo exhibition Asymmetric conversation (Performing, Bilbao) in 2016, Kiwon Hong’s Solo Show at Brain Factory (Seoul, Korea) in 2012, and From One Place to Another at Galerie Plan.D (Düsseldorf, Germany) in 2011. Also, Participated in a number of selected group shows across East Asia and Europe.
Kiwon took a part in numerous domestic and international artists in residency programs at Bilbao Arte (exchange program with SeMA, 2016), Nanji Residency (Seoul Museum of Art, Korea/2013), Augarten Contemporary (The Belvedere, Austria/2012), Exchange Artist in residency, Kulturamt Landeshauptsadt Düsseldorf (Germany/2011), and Goyang Studio (National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea/2011).
He also joined many selected public art projects and received grants such as Culture and Art Grant (Art Council Korea/2017), Public Art R & D (Art Council Korea/2015~2016), Artist Grant (Gyeonggi Culture and Arts Foundation/2016), and SeMA Exhibition Grant (SeMA /2012).