Yoon Suk One: Things Not Seen
Gallery Baton is pleased to announce Yoon Suk One (b. 1983)’s solo exhibition, Things Not Seen, from 14th July to 20th August in Apgujeong, Seoul.
Yoon Suk One unfolds the world containing those conflicting yet conjunct notions such as individuals and society, memory and record, and present and past within canvases. He takes roles of an observer and a messenger through paintings reflecting his own experiences ranging from exceedingly trivial and personal incidents to social issues delivered by various media.
The exhibition Things Not Seen reveals new works completing Yoon’s series ‘Trilogy of Memory and Emotions’. The artist has learned a strategy for keeping one step away from his private experiences through two series of works; Deferred Things (2013) dealing with his recollections about traveling experience, and Growing Things (2014) adopting the things what he faces in an ordinary environment as a subject matter.
In terms of leitmotif, Things Not Seen (2016) digs into the past that had happened before Yoon was born or certain memories that he cannot recall. At the planning stage, he presumed that it would be beneficial for maintaining the psychological/physical distance from the events, as he employed what he had not experienced, unlike two previous series mentioned above. However, in the process of selecting, he found himself paying more attention to the events generated and replayed under a social structure rather than entirely new cases. It consequently enables the artist to draw his own analysis on the target events that occurred in the past, since his private sentiments towards recent similar incidents are projected onto them. This is why his paintings surpass a simple reproduction, even though he describes the past events, which he did not experience.
Yoon attempts to convey moving moments of his remembrances and feelings, which stem from his constant records and collected photographs or imageries to a canvas. It is an action of adding subjective elements such as personal recollections and emotions to objective incidents that the community has gone through. Ultimately, this process produces layers of copious feelings.
While Yoon overlaps traces of attachments on an achromatic surface through his manner of expression delicately applying afterimages of light and shade, new scenes and images are continuously created and dissipated. This reinterpretation phase allows artistic vitality to be blended with a dignified sense of depth and eventually establishes paintings constructed by his own visual language.
Though Yoon’s strongpoint is a fine and specific depiction distinctly exposing themes, the pieces represented in this show underline an emergence of sentiments caused by moderate colors and ambiguous figures originated from brush strokes pressing and pushing their subjects. Subject and object of an event and each different sensibility from the artist himself and spectators coexists in his works which release the dazzling beauty of moderation and a drastic sense of boldness at the same time.
Since Yoon believes that the act of painting is a primal human behavior equivalent to fundamental physical actions such as eating and speaking, it is intriguing to witness how his ponderous strokes embody an original world possessing charms of both representational and abstract paintings through Things Not Seen, the final stage of the series, ‘Trilogy of Memory and Emotions’.
Yoon Suk One was one of the selected artists by 37th Joongang Fine Arts Prize, a resident artist at Cheongju Art Studio and Gyeonggi Creation Centre. Also, he has been attributing to expand the scope of Korean Painting, actively presenting his works at various exhibitions held at Gallery Baton, Seoul Citizens Hall, Culture Station Seoul 284, and Seoul Arts Centre.
