Buhm Hong Awarded Digital Art Guild Prize at SDAI 2015 International Exhibit

The 53rd San Diego Art International Exhibition for 2015 awarded Buhm Hong the Digital Art Guild Prize. 

As one walks into the SDAI entryway, about to descend to the lower level gallery, one senses the presence of Hong's memory-like animation on the wall space immediately across the open space.

It is a challenge to present the animation with the ambient lighting. Nevertheless, the imagery tugs at one's curiosity. Here are two samples of the animated flow.

Buhm Hong / Panoramic still from animation:  Floating Dreams
medium : Cinema 4D, HD projectors, media player, speaker; size : 1920 X 1080 (pixel); date : 2014

Joe Nalven: I imagine that most viewers will stand in amazement, wondering how this video came into being. Would you share your process with the readers?

Buhm Hong: Let me talk about the process of making a video work 'Floating Dreams' briefly. I took photographs of the wallpapers from the houses of redevelopment areas and used for the backgrounds of the video. The lights of window frames were made by a 3D program 'Cinema 4D' that simulates the movements of the lights and the shapes  of the houses.

Thinking of abandoned and vanished towns and houses, I tried to draw the living memories within. I scanned the drawings and through the post productions in computer, they appear and disappear with moving lights.

In this exhibition, I projected to a wall of the gallery space. I aimed to show an optical illusion as if the light comes from outside with a constant changes of walls and drawings.

Buhm Hong / Details from 12 minute animation Floating Dreams

Hong describes his art-video-animation journey: 

"Memories continuously shape our worldview, including our perception of real and imagined spaces. My multidisciplinary practice is an attempt to understand how people accept new and strange places, including the liminal space between “being there” and “being here”. I focus on the origin of consciousness that can connect two disparate yet related places through fragmented, stream-of-consciousness thoughts that gradually form organic structures such as pipes and mirrors. I work across various artistic platforms including video, sculpture, installation, and drawing to express remnants of multi-layered memories that become landscapes of my profound imagination. I create spaces that seem to exist only in our subconscious—places that are simultaneously nostalgic and utterly foreign. I concretize my ideas regarding the structure of memories in the three-dimensional world, often utilizing organic and industrial imagery such as pipes and mirrors, intertwined with labyrinthine elaborateness. The pipes serve as a conduit for the flow of memories, while the mirrors’ poignant reflections constantly change through the shadows of the pipes, forming an infinite loop of faded recollections."

To get a sense of Hong's animation style, visit his Floating Dreams.

Artist at work / Buhm Hong setting up projector

Also on display at the rear of the gallery is 5 Rooms.

The exhibition was juried by juried by David A. Ross.

Nb. The color variation in the selected details from the animation resulted from the image editing process. Joe Nalven