emograms with LOVE exhibition / 2020

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emograms with LOVE

International solo exhibition, Lotte Gallery, Incheon, South Korea, 2020

The exhibition consists of two parts. The first space is built around emograms and the installation Ball.Room. The second displays a new installation called, LOVE field, and a typography-based sculpture.

Photos by Eszter Sarah

Exhibition and video music: The SEX

Special thanks to Pi Studio, Lotte Gallery and Lotte Department Store

About the emograms

The news provided the inspiration for this installation: In 2015, Oxford Dictionaries chose an emoji pictogram (Emoji is a Japanese word, the ‘e’ means picture + ‘moji’ means a letter / character.) as the word of the year. I found this very exciting: we started written communication using drawings and pictograms, and then we constantly simplified these to letters and characters. After the birth of mobile and computer communication we re-created drawings and pictograms from characters and letters and incorporated them into our daily lives. I put the lost words back into the emojis. That's how emograms were born.

emograms.com

emogram badges (7pc)

Painted aluminium and iron, 60 cm diameter

These giant badges are based on the first Smiley, which was originally a badge itself. The „smiley“ was born in 1963 when Harvey R. Ball, owner of an advertising agency in the USA, came up with the idea to use it to lift the mood of the workers of a recently merged insurance company.

emogram sculptures (7pc)

Painted acrylic, 40 cm diameter

emograms as painted and printed patterns

Painting, acrylic on canvas, 100x100 cm

Printing vs Painting? These are characteristically conceptual reflections on the subject matter of art and the perception of art. The question is: What is the difference between printed patterns and painted patterns? Is a painted pattern art? Is a printed pattern decoration? At which point of existence is an artwork actually an artwork? Furthermore, can these two qualities coexist in one? In other words, is it possible that an object is art and decoration at the same time? It is the connection between design and the “divinity“ of art that is at the centere of this investigation.

Ball.Room. installation

How can internet-based interactions express feelings? The Ball.Room installation prompts viewers to think about how human digital communication is. The installation is a yellow room filled with yellow emogram balls, the visitors can play with.

The installation reveals the need for a human touch in today’s text-based cyber communication and play with this baffling reverse transformation: first, pictography writing became simplified and alphabetical, then pictograms were reinvented by using alphabetical writing.

(The title Ball.Room. does not only mean a room with yellow balls, but it is also an homage to Harvey R.Ball, who drew the first “smiley”.)

LOVE field

Installation, fabric

This pink field explores the borders and transitions between art and design and features immersive viewer interaction. Everyone loves to touch tall grass with hands. This effect is even more pleasant here as plush is a very soft material. Visitors can walk on a route and interact with the strange, rampant, pink field.