IT IS WHAT IT IS BUT IT IS MORE THAN IT SEEMS

AN EXHIBITION OF WORKS BY YOON JUNGEUN

 

Today in this age of the fast image, where we constantly find ourselves rapidly scanning the endless stream of ubiquitous digital imagery, it is a relief, in fact, it is a necessity for us to see the hand-made image. 

Yoon Jungeun’s painting provides this opportunity. 

 

The NewYork critic Peter Scheylerdahl once wrote: 

 “Painting is the old slow art of the eye and the hand united in service of the imagination…no other medium can so directly combine vision and touch to express what it is like to have a particular mind”. 

 

So… what is it in the work of Yoon Jungeun that is being manifest, that enables us to imagine and feel?

 

 Materially her paintings and constructions are meticulously crafted, but here we see craft not for its own sake, to show skill, but crafted in order to create forms that generate feeling, and a process that demonstrates attentiveness and CARE. 

In the work of Yoon Jungeun we see a sensibility at work, we see an artist paying attention and this encourages us pay attention to how things are done. Her paintings are not simply objects but are temporal events accumulations, durations of times. They take time to make and time for their multilayered content to unfold.

 

Initially the works may read as formal abstract painting informed by the both Eastern and Western contemporary art from Dansaekhwa to Non-Objective abstraction and by the crafts of Korea. But these works have readings beyond mere formalism or a pastiche of previous abstract conventions.

 

THEY ARE WHAT THEY ARE BUT MORE THAN THEY SEEM.

 

They have a value in what they are but also what they are not. They are not brash. They are not flashy. They do not shout at us. They are not big. They are quietly persistent, some are fragile, some are beautiful… these are qualities and values that we should treasure. Materials and processes are respected.

Her works have a modesty of scale and are patiently executed but I do not think these works are about perfection but rather reflect a contemplative purpose.

Colour is, to state the obvious, an important element, but not the only one. The colour employed is harmonious located in balanced but dynamic grids. We find complexity in what initially appears simple. If we give these works time their complexity unfolds. Texture, material, surface, process, support, size combine to generate content. The material and the way it is handled, the “facture” as the French say, carries readings and feelings of order and diversity. 

 

For me the value of Yoon Jungeun’s work lies not in its style but in how it is made and what it is… what it signifies. The processes are repetitive almost mesmeric, almost meditative. The work reveals care, modesty and respect. It manifests an underlying energy. The work celebrates in its quiet way beauty and harmony. 

They are jewel like … they reflect light. 

Beyond their materiality they have a contemplative purpose. 

In the end, I see these works as offerings, as offerings of grace and beauty to us or as Yoon Jungeun suggests they offer “spaces for poetic healing’ of our spirits in such hectic times.

 

 

David Thomas. Melbourne, September, 2022.

David Thomas is an artist based in Melbourne, Australia, 

He is an Emeritus Professor in the School of Art, RMIT University. Melbourne.