Korean artist Jihyun Park has taken pointillism to a whole new level by using incense sticks to burn tiny holes in paper to form his entire composition. Rather than add, the artist takes away- resulting in a “reverse pointillism”. Burning thousands of tiny holes into rice paper, he creates picturesque images of trees, cloud and mountains. The final products are then mounted on varnished canvases. His precision and technique is highly impressive- taking hours to meticulously craft each individual image .The various images in the series could be compiled together to form a large natural landscape, bringing to mind traditional Chinese ink paintings.   

Park’s artist bio states, “After reading the books Gulliver’s Travels, Utopia, and Erewhon and seeing the Japanese animated movie Castle in the Sky, I became inspired to develop a relationship between the concept of utopia and the materials that I use in my work. My recent work, Incense Series, focuses on this relationship while searching for the promised harmonic balance that utopia brings. Ironically, the word ‘utopia’ in Korean is ‘Yi Sang Hwang’ and ‘Hwang’ means ‘incense’. The subjects addressed in my work range from the natural world to memories of the past, reflecting the constant physical and emotional changes in our environment. It is my hope that the ‘moments’ I captures of my subjects are ones when they are at their most ideal – true utopias. While drawing them with the incense, I am ‘holding’ a split moment of harmony in my hands.”

View the artist’s profile and work on The Drawing Center 

via The Drawing Center