"The questions you ask are more important than the answers you give." Sienna Ko
What draws you to the medium you chose?
I use acrylic paints including interference, fluorescent, iridescent paints, mica powder, matte and gloss varnish on the surface. With these materials, I create luminosity and reproduce momentary colors from my memories. My paintings are continuously shifting depending on the amount of light they reflect and the viewers’ viewpoint: their height, angle, or distance from the painting. In my work, my concern is about representing subtle colors such as bluish-red or reddish-blue, not simply purple as known.
Tell us a little about your process (I don’t believe in giving it all away). In my painting, simple geometrical elements: including dots, lines, and shapes come together to create a huge harmonic movement. I explore a relationship among geometric shapes, variations on impossible figures, and illusions involving saturation, value, color, and shape perception. For the background surface,I use a combination of mixed media including gel mediums, pouring medium, molding paste, and gesso to explore surface and texture. I work overtime, repeatedly layering, sanding, dripping, and splashing paint to build up the surface until I have achieved a specific sense of atmosphere. To create patterns, I use an iconic technique that I developed – I covered the canvas with masking tape and carve the pattern out with a knife.
Who inspires you?
Mark Rothko, Claud Monet, Bridget Riley, Olafur Eliasson, Whanki Kim What do you do to get inspired? Nature has always been and will always be a driving force of creative inspiration. I have a genuine interest in color and how to represent a color of sunshine or sky reflected in a mossy pond.
What do you hope your work achieves?
I grew up in a very rigid and conservative community. My parents and teachers defined who I was as a person, what I should do (or be) and what I should not do (or not be). They were busy throwing their own answers to me, but never really gave enough time to think about the assumptions: What is good and bad? What is beauty or ugliness? Where do the values come from? How does the boundary between opposite values exist and transform? What should I do in this relativistic world, where multiple values co-exist?
I hope my work asks philosophical questions for the audience. To be philosophical means to look for whys and wherefores, without defining things and to be open to all possibilities. The questions you ask are more important than the answers you give. I think artists should keep asking questions... and I know I will.
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