Early influences on my artworks - family, culture, and life event

My mother was an artist(majored in graphic design) and art educator. My father studied physics and worked as an engineer. While growing up in Korea in a Catholic family, I was taught to follow the law and order and to pursue the perfection of skill under Confucianism. Buddhism taught me a way to meditate and contemplate, while Zen showed me how to be spontaneous in every moment of life. Shamanism increased my awareness of the life force behind visual reality. My immigration to the US in 1988 triggered “the awareness” of my roots and my identity in terms of my way of perceiving, thinking, reasoning, and responding to my surroundings.

 

My interests - our universe, space, and light

I have been equally interested in the visual natural phenomena as well as in the invisible natural force behind the visual phenomena. I place myself in the middle of these natural phenomena, seeing itself. The universe witnesses itself through my eye. I see that everything exists in relationships with others. These relationships sustain the universe and form ultimate unity, a self-sustainable living system. A beautiful form with function. My artworks are the reflection of this interior process devoid of as many personal agendas, thoughts, and judgments as possible. 

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Intelligence is the product of accumulated perception through sensitivity.

I am the medium to experience our universe. My work is a reflection of my understanding and appreciation for our universe; its interconnectedness; its pattern by self-organizing itself; its unity/wholeness. 

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Among all, there are two things to which I’ve been drawn. First, space/void unoccupied between objects/materials. The second is light. 

 

Space - The Void/Yeobaek
During my college years at OTIS Parsons in Los Angeles, I made two trips back to Korea. During the trip, I learned much in-depth about “yeobaek” which is an important element in Korean art, culture, and life. In painting, yeobaek is the void/unoccupied space. In architecture, yeobaek is the space where activity happens between the walls. In life, yeobaek is a restfulness. In music, yeobaek is the silence between sounds or time between notes. I’ve found the same notion of “yeobaek” in composition 4’ 33” by an American composer, John Cage. This “four minutes thirty-three seconds of silence” presents the silence in the environment to the audience.

 

A void is a form
In the early 1990s, I began to break away from representation to semi-abstraction. Then, from semi-abstraction to abstraction. By adopting calligraphic marks, the space/yeobaek was presented by movement, direction, speed, weight, rhythm, gravity and energy. I moved away from acrylic paint to water-based media – gouache, watercolor, and sumi ink – and I worked on a stainable surface – Korean mulberry paper, commonly known as rice paper. When gouache and other water-based pigment is absorbed by this paper, it allows a similar experience as seeing colors in stained glass by letting the light pass through. With this paper’s translucent quality, I began to use physical light as one of my media. The surface(Korean mulberry paper) was used to reveal the ground itself and assimilate the ground with the wholeness of the completed work.

In addition to Korean mulberry paper, I paint on Korean transparent colored silk, “nobang”. It is similar to organza in the West. Multi-layering silk allows more light to be kept between each layer, increasing the saturation of color. It makes it possible for the physical light in the environment to interact with the work at the moment a viewer is present. Mixed-media work participates in the ever-changing dynamic moments rather than recording the past. Space/yeobaek is experienced as a series of progressive color fields.

Light fills up the void, casting the space.
A void is given form by light.
And I perceive light as a form.