WHY is a Korean artist living and working in Minneapolis, MN who plays a raw, fermented, psychedelic permutation of the blues drawing heavy inspiration from a traditional Korean folk music called sanjo. A former blues bass player who grew up listening to jazz after hours in Kansas City’s 18th and Vine district and traveling the country to see psychedelic rock bands, Win worked in the live music industry and experienced hundreds of shows from which he found nuggets of inspiration from everywhere. Win cites guitarists Eddie Lang, Joe Pass, Wes Montgomery, Keiji Haino, Loren Connors, Matt Pike, Marissa Anderson and Shin Joong Hyun; composers and piano players J.S. Bach, Frederic Chopin, Erik Satie, Claude Debussy, Sun Ra, John Cage, Thelonious Monk and Brian Eno as minor influences.
At his core, a frustrated painter, Win’s music is an extension of his visual art practice that routinely abandons form and structure while exploring themes of duality and post modern art ideas. Win has received commissions for his visual art and exhibited in traditional art venues but his focus was shifted while in Minneapolis where he had lived and worked blocks away from the sites at which George Floyd, Renée Good, and Alex Pretti were murdered. At a crossroads, Win came across a quote by Nam June Paik who said art is either yin or yang. ‘Yang art is rock music—aggressive, loud, and external. Yin art is more contemplative, like video art’. Yang recognized an imbalance within himself, bought an electric guitar in 2023 and began making more Yang art he calls modern electric sanjo guitar.
winhoonyang@gmail.com
2020 Art Connects Us, Hennepin Theatre Trust’s Billboard Project
2016 Filmipedia, Newark Museum, NJ
2016 Altered Esthetics Film Festival, Minneapolis, MN
2015 Reflection: Made Here (Installations), Minneapolis, MN
2014 Diverse Perspectives, IHCC Gallery, Inver Groves, MN
2013 Foot in the Door 4, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN