Photograph taken while “sourcing the city”
Four Mini collages
Visual Essay
New York streets are full of garbage. Cigarette butts, tissue paper, plastic. Everything goes around the streets. People throw away garbage on the street without hesitation. The combination of the puddles on the street and the cigarette butts look so dirty. Yet flowers are planted all over the streets. Washington Square Park has installed the art of Ai Weiwei. People watched it and took pictures. There are trees and birds in the park. From a distance, the park looks really peaceful. However, there is garbage in the park. Near benches and entrances, I can find garbage. During the sunny day, you can see the buildings and streets of New York and also see garbage on the street, but when it is night and you look far away, you can not see trash.The sparkling lights of the building create night views. The night view of New York is beautiful and the streets are cleared.
A preliminary sketch
The Final piece
Through this work, I wanted to show a different view of New York daytime and night time. New York, which I had imagined before coming to Korea, was slightly different from the appearance of New York after I experienced. It was shocked about dirty streets and people who dumped garbage without any casualties. But at night, New York was brilliant and beautiful, like my imagination. I wanted to show these two contradictions in a single work. I depicted a beautiful night view of New York, but the materials used the garbage I picked up. I decorated the night view of New York with the packing paper of sweets, a plastic container and cigarettes I easily found in the street, and plastic bags and wraps I usually use and throw away. The food packaging wrap was painted with acrylic paints and then crumpled to show the New York river, giving the impression of New York from afar. I wanted to convey the contrast of day and night by painting the rest of the buildings in black using charcoal. In the background, I used one of the swatches I had made with diptych. The whirlwind pattern used by showing my feelings of confusion.
