sun k kwak

Sun K. Kwak: Enfolding 280 Hours
Brooklyn Museum



“My first reaction to the visual and emotional qualities of a given space is rendered through my spontaneous tape drawings.”
—Sun K. Kwak

When Kwak first visited the Brooklyn Museum to research the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Gallery, where she would install Enfolding 280 Hours, she noticed that the space was “like a square enfolding a circle” with “two concentric opposing circles of energy.” On the basis of these initial impressions, she created a digital rendering to indicate the lines she envisioned in the space and the direction in which they would flow. During the installation process, which began two months before the exhibition opened, Kwak used rolls of masking tape to create the sculptural drawing. Estimating that it would take 280 hours to install the work, she titled it Enfolding 280 Hours.

Audience interaction is an essential component of the work. Kwak was inspired by the diversity of the Brooklyn Museum’s visitors and its mission to act as a bridge between the collections and the experience of each visitor: “When I go to a gallery or museum, it often feels like a dead space. I want to create work that has life, vitality. I don’t want to produce another dead body. I don’t want people to stare at my work, but to feel it by walking into the picture. The space changes as the work and audience interact together.” She says that she chose abstract imagery for the installation “so that everyone can relate to it. Everyone sees something different through their unique interaction with the space.”

At the close of the exhibition, the tape will be pulled off the walls and discarded. According to Kwak’s artist statement, “This process of emptying the space is a metaphor for the ephemeral nature of life and my acceptance of the emptiness of that nature. Yet the drawing lives on in viewers’ memories as an imprint that leaves the space forever altered.”

See more of Sun K. Kwak's work