Hong Il Hwa is a Korean artist established in France who puts the figure of the Woman in the center of his art.
The Woman in his art is someone who likes to be observed and know that we are observing here. Hong Il-Hwa says in Telegrama interview “I love Women, Women are fascinating. I like Women when they are doing their make-up when they are doing their skincare routine when they wake up in the morning when they are wearing make-up ( Red lipstick) when they try to look like the beauty Standards…”
In this series of paintings, he denounces the consequence of the beauty standards imposed by the media. We can see that the women represented had received plastic surgery interventions. Their faces are deformed to the point that they may look like a monster with big eyes, little nose, and a big mouth. The figures represent the women’s insecurities and worries about the image that they need to fit in our modern society. You can see that tears come out from their eyes which have a sad look. This sadness is even more emphasized by the lipstick around their mouth.
His work poses the question of the women’s beauty in all its aspects, for every ethnicity. He questions also the medium that creates that beauty standards as the media, manga, or even video game, that represent women with big eyes, deformed from the reality.
The femininity theme in Hong Il-Hwa work is a disturbing femininity representation. Indeed, the image of the Woman that he paints is not the one that we know, on contrary, they are different and distort, which makes the viewer go out from his comfort zone and discover another reality.
Discover his artwork during the Sonamou exhibition, 간gan, from November 22 to November 25 2018
http://hongilhwa.com/index.html
