In the world of art and design, beauty is the eye of the beholder; what appeals to you may be drastically different than the preferences of your neighbors. USC Roski student and designer April Kwon wanted to challenge these set binaries, asking viewers what classifies a piece as \u201cbeautiful\u201d in her new exhibition, \u201cPretty Ugly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kwon has spent the last year challenging set perceptions and rules in design. Filled with design \u201cno-nos,\u201d this interactive exhbit broke all the rules of design, according to Kwon. <\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Pretty Ugly\u2019 is about expanding the vocabulary of contemporary design,\u201d Kwon said. \u201cThere are a lot of labels that we like to put on good design and bad design, pretty or ugly, traditional or trendy, so I wanted to challenge these notions and see how we think of and examine design and culture in contemporary times.\u201d<\/p>\n
The exhibit stands as a 10-foot by 10-foot cube made up of 376 pieces of paper with an endless number of paperclips holding the project together, and emphasizes elements such as squares, QR codes and the Comic Sans font, which are all traditionally frowned upon in design school. <\/p>\n
With bright white lights shining directly down onto the piece, shadows cast along the walls, and popping colors call for your attention, the exhibit has a commanding presence as a viewer first steps into the room. <\/p>\n
Regardless of the exhibit\u2019s bold appearance and important underlying message, Kwon had doubts about finishing the piece before it had even begun. <\/p>\n
\u201cI emailed [my professor] and went, \u2018I\u2019m not doing this\u2026 I don\u2019t have time, and I\u2019m so anxious,\u2019\u201d Kwon said. \u201cHe sat with me for like an hour or two, and he goes, \u2018April, I think you need to do it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Brian O\u2019Connell, Associate Professor of Art and Design and the Chair of the Design Program, had confidence in Kwon\u2019s talent from the get-go.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just encouraged her to think about it as an opportunity to do something that was a kind of culmination of her time as a design student that wouldn\u2019t necessarily be available, let\u2019s say, next year if she\u2019s working in a firm,\u201d O\u2019Connell said. \u201cI think that this experience will provide April and her peers an understanding that there\u2019s always an inkling of like, \u2018I could be doing something else, it could be more,\u2019 and a kind of hunger to do that, which I think April certainly will pursue.\u201d<\/p>\n
On March 12, the exhibit\u2019s opening night, Kwon embraced guests curious to see her finished piece for the first time, following a year of research and planning and three days of installation, all having been completed just the night before. <\/p>\n
\u201cI have seen multiple rounds of exhibitions, but I feel like oftentimes we don\u2019t see something 3D in the entire space, or like a physical installation. Normally, it\u2019s just like 2D pieces on the wall,\u201d said Christine Zhang, a third-year design student at Roski. \u201cSo, I think walking in and seeing April\u2019s piece \u2014 it was just mind-boggling, to be honest.\u201d<\/p>\n
The exhibit is open to the general public through April 7 at the Roski Studio Buildings off of Flower St. and W. 30th St. <\/p>\n
Kwon hopes that in her pursuit to change modern binaries of design, that her larger-than-life exhibit will inspire not only art and design students but the general public. As she concludes her college career, looking toward the future, Kwon encourages everyone to take in the hard work of the artists and the beauty behind all of their works. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the world of art and design, beauty is the eye of the beholder; what appeals to you…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":247590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[110565,110569,110570,110572,110567,48,52,51,47,50,49,110568,110573,110574,110571,110566,110575],"class_list":["post-247589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-april-kwon","tag-brian-oconnell","tag-christine-zhang","tag-elizabeth-carroll","tag-good-bad-ugly","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-pretty-ugly","tag-roski-studio","tag-roski-studio-flower-st","tag-usc-april-kwon","tag-usc-roski","tag-w-30th-st"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}