Julia Elise Hong
Today (2025)
solo exhibition, de boer, Los Angeles, California, January 11–February 15, 2025Today, two people hugging looked like an eclipse, making the boy’s legs appear invisible. Whether the boy has legs is unclear. Is he standing, or is he flying?
Today, it felt like both day and night. The small, yellow things in the sky were brighter than––could it be the moon or the sun? Which was mimicking which is unclear. Everything seemed to mimic one another: the guy’s hair and the tree, the guy’s shoes and the dark, and the fog and the flower.
Today, the two friends looked like one person.
Today, for Boris, the things of the sea resembled one wing and the pink cloud resembled the other.
Today, the man standing and waiting looked like a butterfly.
And today, the person looked like a column supporting the entire scene.
At the moment, I have one main interest: that is the appearance of the thing––which contains both subjectivity and relations in a double bind. Let me explain.
Let’s say I have a thing, a figure, or a singular subject in mind to depict or arrive at while painting. What I pay attention to in and about the thing are the conjunctions of its essence and social reality: the subjective and the objective; affect and language; sensibility and information; discretion and expression; and the unknowable and the known. I’m also beginning to think in terms of potential and accidental, but that requires further consideration.
And now, when I say I am interested in the appearance of the very complex thing, I mean: (1) the thing may or may not appear; (2) if it does appear, it may appear whole or partial; and (3) any appearance, or any variety of appearances, is possible. Once I think about things and the world in terms of ‘appearing and not appearing’* at one point in time and space, any refracted, limited, or opaque appearance becomes an opportunity for a new possibility. What I pursue through each of my paintings, each world, is for the thing to exist in imminent possibilities––for each painting to become an opportunity for us to rethink our notion of subjectivity and get to know that we, as singular beings, are both essential and social in countless ways. We would each be an active participant in regaining our human being in the contemporary world and not a passive consumer of given discourses. Perhaps then, all appearances have a chance for being natural.
*The reason I say ‘appearing and not appearing’ as opposed to ‘appearing and disappearing’ is because I live and work on the side of believing in the thing that appears forever missing, forever delayed, and forever to come. Painting is my methodology for endlessly making an ontological argument for the existence of the thing.
These thoughts affect every aspect of the image, its nuances, and the way it is painted, resulting in qualities of the foreign, the mysterious, and the clandestine that are strangely recognizable and relatable. At least, that’s my intention.
Works
2024
oil on canvas
38.5 x 49 in / 98 x 125 cm
2025
oil on canvas
38.5 x 49 in / 98 x 125 cm
2024
oil on canvas
38.5 x 49 in / 98 x 125 cm
2024
oil on canvas
38.5 x 49 in / 98 x 125 cm
2025
oil on canvas
49 x 56 in / 125 x 143 cm
2023
oil on canvas
38.5 x 49 in / 98 x 125 cm