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G. Song Art Gallery

193 South Avenue Fanwood, NJ 07023

(201) 322-9551

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Gi Wan Song was born in 1933 in Seoul, Korea.  In his early youth he lost his father and experienced the upheaval of his family life during the Korean War.  He was forced to escape the city on foot with many other families, while bombs rained over their heads.  The young Gi Wan saw the ravages of war firsthand; bodies piled in careless heaps of a hundred, soldiers brutally murdering women and children, starving orphans running for their lives.  These early images of human viciousness impressed themselves deeply within the artist's psyche.  He was never to forget the human capability for violence and destruction.   While in Korea he voiced his opinions against the Korean government's anti-humanism practices, calling for a reunification of the South and North.

 

Song married in 1962 and chose to emigrate to the States after the birth of his last child in 1971.  Like other immigrants then and now, Song hoped to find peace and harmony in the golden streets of America, a new country that had never seen war and its devastating results during this century.  Song did not, however, forget his home country.  During his years as an American citizen he continued to fight for human rights in Korea.  He worked with the former Korean U.N. Ambassador, Chang-Young Lim, to rouse awareness of the Korean government's brutal actions (students protesting the government were often silenced on their knees with their hands tied behind their backs, while soldiers poured buckets of excrement into their mouths).  Song's political stance against the Korean government earned him a notorious reputation amongst the influential leaders of his homeland, and Song was for a time, banned from re-entering Korea.

 

Song personally found relative success over the years in the state of New Jersey, together with his wife providing a decent home and life for their family.  His busy working life left little time for artistic expression.  However in 1986, he was able to publish a Korean historico-political documentary of his experiences in America.  The book, though banned from distribution in Korea, was well-read and received with enthusiasm by his colleagues and by Korean intellectuals.

 

Song began to concentrate on his visual art fairly recently.  He utilized his self-taught skills and enhanced his own talent through hours of practice.  His work is heavily influenced by Picasso and Moore.  His 1994 entry in Plainfield, New Jersey's annual Outdoor Festival of Art -- "Eve of Dreams," won Song his first public recognition.  "Eve of Dreams" placed first in the Festival, thus beginning Song's successful relationship with New Jersey's community of artists and shows. 

 

"Eve of Dreams" was part of Song's Recycled Series, influenced by the artist's growing awareness of his natural environment.  The years had ripened the artist's specific political fire into a general concern for all nations and people of the Earth.  American life, though rich and plentiful, was not without its problems.  Americans' easy disregard for conservation, and their casual attitude towards producing billions of tons of waste, was to Song a rallying point for his work.  In the Recycled Series, Song uses old apple cartons, beer caps, "garbage" and other so-called "waste" materials, "recycling" them into enduring statements of structure and beauty in his art.  He juxtaposes his recycled materials against the obvious naturalism of scenes of reproduction, and pastoral images, to impress upon the viewer the irony implicit in this series.

 

Song's current work is a multi-panel painting still undergoing completion.  His first two panels depict the Korean Kwangju-Massacre and the Jewish Holocaust.  He plans to add the American Civil Rights movement as a third panel.  It is obvious in the Atrocity Series, that Song's early experiences during the Korean War have never quite left the artist's mind.  The panels are painted with an angry mixture of bright colors and clustered, chaotic images of death and human viciousness.  The composition causes the viewer's eye to fly around the canvas in a dizzying swirl, overwhelmed by the immensity of the acts portrayed and the faces of those being betrayed and brutalized, as well as of those doing the betraying and brutalizing.

 

Common to almost all of Song's works is the emphasis on humanity.  Whether this is implicit or boldly declared, the artist's work is, like the man, deeply political by nature.  His hope in the new millenium is for a World Declaration of Peace -- not just for human pleasure, but for human survival. 

 

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All works, text  and images displayed on this disc/website are protected by copyright and are the exclusive property of Gi Wan Song. No unauthorized reproduction in any form, including print and electronic, is permitted without the written permission from the artist. ©1998 G. Song Gallery