"Haha Hoho" & "Huh Huk" By Designer Hyunju Lee

These two pieces are my favorite from the exhibit. The pieces represent the emotions of sadness and joy which respectively translate into the expression of those emotions, crying and laughter. "Haha Hoho" is a joyous occasion from the first glance. The subtle positive bend of the lines encourage you to mimic the movement with a smile of your own. The wispy lines appear to run across the entire canvas but actually taper and reappear or completely disappear. They could be said to represent the lips of a thousand smiles with each symbol of hieut bubbling from beneath the lips to create laughter within the piece. The different colors and sizes of the characters reflect the different sizes of laughter from a subtle chuckle to a repeating cackle to a robust merriment of laughter. On the other end of the spectrum, but in line with the previous, "Huh Huk" is the sound of sobbing in Korean and this piece somberly displays it. In contrast to "Haha Hoho", "Huh Huk" is a gentle, melon collie expression of sadness. The lines run straight across horizontally, never breaking or bending. The piece has a determination to show no positive emotion. The drab colors underline that and the symbols are considerably less numerous, vibrant, and varied in size when compared to "Haha Hoho". The symbols become the universal expression of sadness, tears. The two pieces paired together give a soaring sense of jubilation and pessimistic crash back to reality. The space between the pieces leaves the audience to create its own closure as to why the drastic change of emotion. What happened between the two to cause such conflicted expressions? The pieces are a very good use of line and color to express what everybody on Earth can identify with, the balance of emotions and the calm between the extremes.