I am attracted to the irony of the limitation of square canvas and the boundless universe it can contain. When I detect contradiction in my painting, that’s when creative force takes place-- traces of how I relate and respond to this contradiction become the layers of dialogue in my paintings. I bounce back and forth between the chaos and the intuitive order I create. This labyrinth is the domain of my paintings.
Like life, I build vocabulary through experience in every painting I make, and I utilize the vocabulary I gain not to define what I’ve already seen but to expand yet another realm of vocabulary. To do so, I am naturally against formulas that create concrete system. I put anticipation and get the variations of my anticipation. The space left for these variations is where I find breath of life in my paintings.
10 comments:
The materiality of your paintings is extraordinary--the dense layering and the application of paint, the use of varying densities of medium...some have an almost relief quality to them. It's really interesting to stand in the middle of all of them in your studio, in this kind of field where an almost biological component erupts: this autogenetic organism or natural life that you've created, that evolves and morphs through the paitnings.
The intense scrutiny and risk that you take the time to develop in your paintings pays off. The intimacy of your work is rich and sweet, and seeing your work always reminds me of what is possible in painting when the artist invests enormous effort in a single direction.
I think that comes from the idea of getting at something non-mimetic....the sense that Yejin doesn't start with an image and then seeks to paint it, but rather lets some form evolve out of the effort and through this kind of process.
this is when painting becomes a meditative act rather than one based on production.
The producer is the spectator and vice verse.
I think the painting displayed here is an especially successful one. I wonder if anyone else agrees?
Yejin you are the Web Master!!!
(I mean this in the Spidery sense)
I response to Kevin's comment: what does it mean to be successful? I think that Yejin's method of working on single paintings for a really long time, with many moments of aesthetic success and failure built in to a single work, defies the notion that an artwork should be thought about in terms of success or failure. I think Yejin's paintings are like artifacts. Archeologists don't judge the remnants of culture in this way; they use the detailed sensual information they derive from their close observational experience of the piece to enrich their own life and the lives of others.
I think Mike's reference to archeology is a good one. It brings to mind this idea of layers and resurfacing or covering up. I also feel that the image you have up seems almost like an icon or medallion that Indiana Jones would find in a tomb. I really enjoy your layers and your use of space. It's all about flattening a space or making a space seem almost endless. Your paintings also evoke a feeling that you get while reading a dark fairy-tale (brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen or even Edgar Allen Poe). Something quirky and funny with something super fucked up around the corner.
Thank you for all the nutritious observations :)
Responding to what mike wrote last, I do think that everything is valid in aesthetics, and giving a universal hierarchy no longer makes sense. We can only speak in terms of certain context the artist is investigating, and in this sense aesthetic also becomes situational. Without wanting to reach certain satisfaction, there can never be a search and searching is a big part of my painting process so I know I do have certain sense of success and failure. I guess it’s more situational than universal.
Even though I love the connection you made between historical artifacts and my paintings, I believe that there are shared sensibilities in a given moment of time. And people living in that given moment of period are the ones who create and at the same time consume that sensibility. In my opinion, this is where the difference comes in between historical artifacts and art works of our present time. I think this sensibility of our time is one of the things I’m searching for in my paintings.
My name is Jessica Hale, I work for SVA, in the Office of Student Galleries...
I'm trying to create a web page for $960,000+. So far, I have only one image to use for your page. Rather than plucking random images from the blog (that may or may not be in the show), I'd like to ask the artists send 2-3 select jpg images to: Michelle Meier mmeier@sva.edu
Please do this as soon as possible, it really does make a difference in opening night turnout when the school is able to promote the show by linking to the web page.
Congratulations, we look forward to hearing from you.
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