SunHe Hong's artmaking procedures have been widely compared with Performance art

Sep. 8. 2018 5:43 am — after every one left marking on the paper we took pic togather as one can see 9"x12 “ drawing paper

By ANTHONY HADEN-GUEST May 14, 2025

    It was at a show at the One Art Space Gallery on Warren Street in Tribeca, NY,  that I saw the work of the Korean artist, SunHe Hong. A visit to her studio deepened my interest and acquainted me with her artmaking procedures which have been widely compared with Performance art. The procedure began with what Hong describes as a social moment, “It was an architect I met on a night out,” she says. That was on May 6, 2018. He visited her studio, he was wowed by her work, and made an unexpected request. “He wanted to make something with me,” she says. “He and I did a series of ten and I saw the potential of something really interesting.”

   What swiftly grew out of this has though by no means been an equal partners situation on the lines of Warhol/Basquiat. Her description of the evening that launched her program tells the story. On September 16, 2018 she went to Employees Only, her go to place, a bar in the West Village. “I meet these people” she said. 4AM was closing time. “But nobody wanted to go home. I said do you guys want to come to my studio? Because I’m doing these special energy drawings. I explained - but they just wanted to go somewhere to continue the party. So they all came. There were about ten people. Guys, one woman, they brought alcohol.”   

   What followed birthed the process. “Somebody has to go first”, Hong says, “Normally I ask the person who got everybody to come, or because I like the person,” she says. “I have to feel the vibe. I give a pen to each person, one at a time. They leave a single mark. And I ask them not to go back when they have left the pen. I ask them to leave a single line to represent themself… their feelings, their emotions right now. I explain that their feeling is the energy. They all made little marks.”

   SunHe Hong grows her own works out of these multiple single marks; marks about which she is interestingly picky...

    Indeed, she has rights to delete or alter marks that bother, and sometimes does so, as with that first group piece, made with the guys from the Employees Only evening. Sometimes it was just down to scrubbing a single line. “I didn’t want it, it didn’t belong there because the energy was bad,” she says. “So I got rid of that line.” Other graphic problems were bigger and badder. “There was a lot of bad energy up there,” she said. “Intoxicated, really chaotic energy. So I made tender lines. I never really had scribbles before this so I had to do something. I always look for really natural forms of lines. That just inspires me. Because each drawing that I create is something new.” Hong adds that she never knows how any one project is going to end. ”That’s the exciting part. It’s almost like going to a bar at night. You don’t know who you are going to meet.  Sometimes something wonderful happens, sometimes it’s chaos and I just throw it away”. WM
 

Process - I ( this is the only time where everyone left their energy marking on the paper - then done)

Process - II. (From process -II . Just me all the way to the finished art ) 

Process -III
 

Process IV — Final sketch 9'x12” on paper

 The final Piece finished, 30” X 40” Canvas, medium, acrylic.