Brooklyn-based Korean artist Ran Hwang, who is no stranger to working with buttons, beads, and pins, has assembled a number of circular and oval pieces paying homage to the beauty of nature. Each creation presents a vignette of cherry blossoms in the artist’s signature methodical approach. Like a meditative practice, Hwang repetitively fixes hundreds of beads and buttons in floral compositions and proceeds to pin them to a backboard, one after the other.
The artist’s wooden canvas serves as the solid-colored backdrop, allowing viewers to focus on the beautifully assembled foreground. The result is somewhere between a traditional painting and a contemporary sculpture. At times, the pieces even seem to resemble large petri dishes populated with speckles of black, brown, and white. There’s something simultaneously scientific and romantic about them, much like cherry blossom trees themselves.
Ode to Second Full Moon II detail
Ode to White Sunset
Ode to White Sunset detail
Ode to Second Love
Two Love Blossom
Ode to Fantasia
Ode to Second Full Moon
Ran Hwang website
via [My Amp Goes to 11, Leila Heller Gallery, Artsy]