K.NOTe no.49
Yuwoon Lee
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K.NOTe no.49
Yuwoon Lee
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Publisher Total Museum Press Pyungchang 32gil 10, Jongno-gu, Seoul Korea (03004) Tel. 82-2-379-7037 total.museum.press@gmail.com Director Jooneui Noh Editor in Chief Nathalie Boseul Shin, Yoon Jeong Koh Coordinator Taeseong Yi Educator Haeun Lee Intern Jisu Hong, Sooeon Jeong Designer Heiin Son Sponsor Arts Council Korea Date of Publication 2018.01 Š Author and artist The reproduction of the contents of this magazine in whole or in part without written permission if prohibited.
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K.NOTe #49 Landscapes, existent but nonexistent or nonexistent but existent Lee Sunyoung Art critic
Lee Yuwoon, who presented paintings of prominent cathedrals at her earlier exhibition “The Great Shell” (2015) at E-LAND SPACE, exhibits paintings of Korean Buddhist temples at her new exhibition “Wonderland” at Gallery Koo. Painting cathedrals and temples, too symbolic to be simply regarded as materials, Lee does not intend to look into symbolic meanings of the materials. If so, it will become materialism, in which materials are meaningful themselves regardless of the artist or the medium. In other words, the materials would be meaningful, even if the artist were not Lee Yuwoon and the medium were not painting. On the other hand, some artists, refusing to be overwhelmed by materials, sometimes get buried under the marginal. Even though triviality matters in terms of shifting or dismantling the center, triviality for its own sake can make art truly trivial, just as “art for the sake of art” made art not greater but even minor. This triviality or marginality is what makes the public question about modern art. Then, isn’t there somewhere in between? Something that is universal among people, but, at the same time, can be painted in their own way. Or a possibility that an artist can change the core meaning of a material in his/her own way. That point exists in Lee’s recent works on cathedrals and temples. Lee’s attitude or way of work is unique. She focuses on the exterior of monumental structures that can be thought of as a microcosm embodying the holistic symbolism of an era or a region. That is what the term “shell” emphasizes. Lee does not completely ignore the symbolism and meaning of her materials – buildings - but she believes all the 4
Empire State Building, Korean ink on canvas, 162Ă—97cm, 2013
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symbolism or meanings come out from the strong presence of the form; she even titled one of her cathedral paintings “Majestic Form”. This means she has intentionally decided to solely depend on her own eyes, which may be the most probable way of thinking as a painter. Like Monet who wanted to paint in an entirely different style from the existing ones, or like a blind man who suddenly opens his eyes, Lee wanted to depict her surroundings as if she had never seen them before. However, since there is no such thing as a pure perspective without any prerequisite, her hope is not a small desire but rather an excessive ambition. In front of us, there are so many schemas that have existed long before us. Without these schemas, or without learning to understand those schemas, men would have remained in the state of nature. This is the destiny of men who are born into a symbolic world they didn’t choose themselves. Artists, of course, are one of those who absorb conventional schemas and create new ones. Removing established visual schemas, exploring painting’s possibility that can never be replaced with anything else, and discovering the unique heterogeneity that can be achieved by painting are the duties of artists. Lee Yuwoon, who wanted to be freed from all the existing burdens including tradition, created a unique landscape where familiarity and unfamiliarity cross each other. The title of the exhibition, “Wonderland”, stresses this cross point of both sentiments. Buddhist temples are familiar to Asians. But, at the same time, it belongs to the category of unfamiliarity, since sanctity, a realm of the absolute other, is something unfamiliar to many. The intensity of the sanctity we can experience through space can range from minor novelty to a shock to our deep souls. Nonetheless, it is clear such sanctity is different from the secular everyday life. Every religion in the world depends on the distinction between sacred and secular, which created the fundamental order of human societies. Every arrangement in temple architecture is constructed following the principle of sanctity. What adds to the distinction between secular(familiar) and sacred(unfamiliar) is an 6
Duplicate_1 Korean ink on canvas, 162×130cm, 2017
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unusual situation of some countries like Korea, where tradition is cut off. Though temple paintings shown in this exhibition focus on the front image of the structures as in the paintings of cathedrals, there is a difference. According to the artist, cathedral buildings are self-sufficient themselves, while Buddhist temples involve much more factors such as the arrangement of mountains and rivers. That is, there is something missing when you depict them only from the front angle. Though the front still takes place as formative beauty that can be easily understood at a glance, this exhibition also features paintings where multiple perspectives are layered upon each other. Images scattered on the layers change according to the angle, supplementing each other. When we look at the titles, which are all names of Korean Buddhist temples, we can see how many temples the non-Buddhist artist has visited. Like in portraits, the exterior of temples which is similar in basic formats but different in subtle ways is located at the center of the canvas. The surroundings are empty. By focusing only on the substance, the form, spatiality stands out and temporality fades. Temporality is left only as a trace within the multi-layered paintings. At her early years, Lee painted urban landscapes. But increasingly omitting the explanatory factors, her works came to put focus only on the forms. Recently, she got interested in powerful structures, so powerful that you can feel the energy just by encountering a single scene described on the canvas. So, there is no radical variation in the reference. Yet there remain changes that naturally occur as the artist follows the reference as it is. All the factors that might make the painting narrative, such as people or landscapes, are removed. In Lee’s work, architectural structures appear without landscape factors, making the form look as if it were floating in zero gravity. However, that doesn’t mean she persists in being as accurate as a blueprint. Her concentration on forms makes linear factors stand out, but there is no single line that determines the overall form. If there were only such lines, Lee’s works should be called scientific 8
illustration rather than painting. It there is something similar to science, it is the neutral space left in the empty margin. This severs a structure from its realistic context and reveals every trace of numerous strokes made with or without confidence. As Lee has kept changing materials, we cannot expect from her nearly-automatic lines she can draw with her eyes closed. In Lee’s painting, however, there are a number of traces heading towards “being probable” or “taking place”. These are traces of time left in space. In her works, time is contained in space. The reason she became interested in architecture, particularly traditional architecture, is because it is a space that contains the traces of humans who perish after living a short life. A single powerful stroke that comes to mind when thinking of Oriental painting is not her way of work. Like in drawing, she accumulates layers of faint-colored meok (Korean ink) by layering a line after another until they become deep and dark. In paintings created by such natural accumulation, some “wrong” lines are left to be found. Not using highly responsive paper but a glued canvas is one of the things that make Lee’s work different from traditional Oriental painting. It is similar to Western oil painting in that ink layers are accumulated, not just leaving the ink to permeate. Unlike Western colors, however, the thin oriental ink on her brush has to be layered and layered to create a sense of deepness. The thin but deep canvas gives life to the presence of a solemn material. Lines drawn by a thin paintbrush have nowhere to hide, which requires the artist to clearly understand her subject’s structure in advance. Lee draws the faces of buildings like portraits. Architecture has been her topic ever since she started painting, but not until she took part in an artist-in-residence program in the Jeonju Hanok Village in 2011 did she develop her interest in Korean architecture. Hanok, traditional Korean house, is composed of lines. A frame filled with lines stands on her canvas. A painting of a Buddhist temple in front of the audience is obvious but unrealistic at the same time. Even though the object painted by an artist whose eyes and hands automatically 9
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monument - Seoul Station 1, Korean ink on canvas, 97×145.5cm, 2017
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monument - bank of Korea 1, Korean ink on canvas, 112×162cm, 2017
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Duplicate_2 Korean ink on canvas, 130×162cm, 2017
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coordinate as she started drawing when she little came from the real world, it stands in a world that co-exist with the real world side by side. In [Woljeongsa Sukwangjeon], [Bongeunsa Jijangjeon], and [Geumsansa Mireukjeon], you can see a reflection down below, as if the subject were floating on the crystal clear water. In works like [Sinheungsa Geukrakbojeon], which lack the reflections, the least realistic context that was left completely disappears like a soul without a shadow. The artist’s desire to comprehensively grasp the subject beyond its frontal image can be found in her multiperspective colored paintings. The paintwork, eaves, and dragon heads viewed from below represent partial perspectives, but they are full of too many an image to think of them as partial. These come as a self-sufficient microcosm even to people who don’t know the symbolic meanings of the schemas in detail. Within Lee’s paintings is a sort of bizarreness created in the process of translating a reference, which exists as a color mass in the air, into a language of lines. The shift from a line to another line found in temple paintings brings about different difficulties from the job of changing a face of a relief into a line. Though laymen sometimes identify a real figure with its painting, to artists, there is no confusion between the two. The variation from the real world into virtual reality is bound to entail a series of follow-up processes. This is also true with cathedral paintings. What a painting that appears to have perfectly transferred the front image of a cathedral depicts is an imaginary scene, combining images and pictures observed or taken from various perspectives together. A cathedral which cannot be seen in perspective due to its angle is reborn in Lee’s painting into a full spread-out frontal image. The front image of a building is like its face, but in reality it may not exist. Lee’s meticulous paintings may seem faithful to the real object. Yet, rather than a transfer of the real object, it is a weird scene that is existent but nonexistent, and nonexistent but existent at the same time. This is not a simple matter of perspective. This happens 16
because the presence of a religious building is constructed based on illusion. Whether a cathedral or a temple, it was designed as a center of the world when it was constructed. This is a prerequisite for monumental structures. This is truer in religious buildings based on the hierarchy of sacred and secular than any other style. However, from a viewpoint of cultural relativism, all the civilizations that once existed in history, as well as famous Oriental or Western buildings, had their own sacred centers. These are orders structuralized based on each individual center not on the one-and-only center. The monuments that stand with an obvious sense of physical existence can become a symbolic center only in the imaginary dimension. This irony between existence and nonexistence can be compared to the concept of average. An average can be calculated through mathematical statistics, but it is hard to find a real object that completely matches the average. The artist, who had done extensive legwork visiting various religious buildings in Europe and Korea, might have detected as much of a difference as repetition. Repetition and difference emerge as a truth applicable both to life and art. By circling not the one-andonly center but numerous centers that keeps slightly changing, the artist produces numerous simulacra, not an exact copy of the original. Continuous repetitions induce unintended modifications. Lee Yuwoon’s paintings, distant from a typical natural beauty of Oriental painting, faithfully follow another rule of nature from a different aspect. Meanwhile, it’s being emphasized in modern physics and biology that the rule of nature is not something fixed but statistical. Phillip Ball, in [Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another], points out statistics use the concept of probability. A balloon stays fully blown because the probability of particles being arranged that way is overwhelmingly higher than other chances. A drop of ink on the water diffuses and spreads out because it is far more probable for ink particles to move randomly and spread out in all directions than to move in order and congregate. The same is true of natural 17
selection in the biological evolution theory. In [Critical Mass], “the study of society by counting” is defined as “Statistik” since it deals with “natural states of society”. Lee’s cold naturalist perspective observing an object layered with symbolism, shakes up the longstanding abstract center. Religious buildings that must have been the symbolic center of each era’s universe are the epitome of the hard-to-change conservative style. However, while compressing time and space, the artist reveals the points of variation. In other words, the shaking outlines consisting of many short lines like a rope, instead of one single smooth line, express the points of variation and the process of taking place after the change. This is not a reproduction of an abstract center that bestows religious buildings a sense of existence but a process of centralization reconstructed every single time. The artist sees from the prototypical structures a “great shell”’ not a sacred center. Changes unwittingly occur from the shell. This is because the center is not located deep inside but scattered throughout the shell. Lee puts emphasis not on the center but on the surface and not on the fixity but on the change. In modern way of thinking, there is no center. If there is, it is merely a relational concept thoroughly dependent on its surroundings. , In [To Take Place], Jonathan Z. Smith, its author and religious scholar, tries to break down the symbol system of a center in architecture that acts as an ideology. According to Smith, the language of a center is political, which originates from an ancient ideology of regality and regal functions. Still, there exist hegemonistic concepts such as “OO, the center of modern art”. Such Platonic logic of centers contracts cultures of the peripheral. However, Smith argues the pattern of the "Center" far from a universal (or even dominant) pattern of symbolization. [To Take Place] is about social and dynamic understanding of a “place” rather than a “sacred space” that acts as an ideology. Under this context, Lee Yuwoon’s lines that take place while swaying endlessly without any firm foundation are evidence of variations. It is not to make a prototype in a physical space; it is to constantly mark it in memory. According to Smith, this is not a language of architecture 18
but a language of routes, roads, traces, marks and footprints. This point of view makes space something not given but created by men’s projection. It also stresses that place is not a passive container but a product of active recognition. In other words, humans are not something situated in a certain place; Humans make the place exist. According to Smith, basic understanding of rituals and their relationship with the place is best demonstrated by highly refined structures like temples. To explore the places humans take, there is nothing better than religious architecture. However, if such materials end up reproducing abstractly assumed symbolic centers, it is not only anachronistic but ideological in that it champions the established order. There is nothing that is sacred or secular in its essence. Sanctity and secularity fall into the category of situation not of substance. Above all, sanctity is a matter of taking place. Religious rituals and their modern successor, art, turn unfamiliar abstract spaces into specific places full of meanings. Lee’s paintings, which reveal as many signs of difference as possible within a simple form, emphasize the fundamental meaning of “taking place” to the present generation floating in an abstract space. Ironically, “taking place” is an inscrutable task that preconditions a loss of place. Substances standing firm and confidant are supported by faint shaky lines. In Lee’s work, the prerequisite of the lines that take place along the axis of time and space is not a confluence but a loss. Modern art, much like religion, contemplates the state of division and discord.
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Chrysler Building , Korean ink on canvas, 162× 97cm, 2013
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Flatiron Building, Korean ink on canvas, 162Ă—97cm, 2013
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Soogwangjeon of Woljeongsa, Korean ink on canvas, 97×162.2 cm, 2014
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majestic form_01,02 Korean ink on canvas 162Ă—130cm, 2013
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Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, Korean ink on canvas, 121×95cm, 2013
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Yuwoon Lee I have been showing consistent interest in embracing old buildings instead of nature since her first solo exhibition in 2001. My project of giving a meaning to a city which had started from a point of landscapes has developed fixed images and frames as time passed by. All those themes which begin with the emotions from existence and a city reach the issue of 'eyes' and 'vision'. They are not drawn with one stroke of a brush that comes up when you think of oriental paintings. Instead, she works on a glue applied canvas with multiple layers of lines using slender brushes with light Korean black ink without using colors. Traditional brush of the Orient is very soft, thus it is a perfect media to sensitively express the emotion and sentiments of a person. They are not drawn with one stroke of a brush that comes up when you think of oriental paintings. Instead, I works on a glue applied canvas with multiple layers of lines using slender brushes with light Korean black ink without using colors. This work can be seen as an extension of project stemming from my endless interest in the relationship between city, space, and individuals. Through this approach, I intend to portray the old relics, the museums, the schools. While the traditional oriental painterly approach is the basis of the analysis of the landscape expressed in terms of the skewed structure involving buildings and surrounding nature, I intend to experiment with new methods that goes beyond the tradition.
Lee Sunyoung Art critic
Yuwoon Lee