Yoon Suk One: Enfolding Landscape
Gallery Baton is pleased to announce Enfolding Landscape, a solo exhibition by Yoon Suk One (b. 1983) from 3rd July to 7th August. Yoon treats painting as a medium for documenting his unique observation and contemplation. In many cases, artists employ photography as an effective means of supplementing evanescent visual memories. Like this tendency, Yoon also constructs a fundamental resource of his practice by collecting and taking pictures of city landscapes constantly shifting their appearances depending on the change of light and seasons. For years, Yoon has paid attention to plants, especially flowers and foliage plants artificially cultivated for an ornamental purpose. In his previous works, Dry Plant series, he attempted to draw the profound theme—the cycle of nature—into his practice by paradoxically and splendidly portraying ‘the last moment’ of the plants whose commercial value as a product no longer operates.
While he is skillful at precisely revealing subjects of painting through detailed and elaborate depiction, his authentic style trained for years, which is reinforcing subjective elements such as private memories and sentiments indwelling in the subjects ultimately enables Yoon to broaden his potential beyond the territory of conventional still-life paintings. This particular technique, which will be discussed later, is initiated by the artist’s inner visual imageries and it develops into a factor giving a sense of subjectivity to the subject in his painting; and it extensively defines how Yoon’s paintings are expressed to the audience.
The viewers can notice the vertical or horizontal repetitive brushstrokes on the top surface of his paintings. Being mainly discovered in the edge of each image which is evenly spread over the surface, this pattern is achieved by brush movements of pressing the surface and pushing it in both directions. This approach decreases the level of identifying outlines of the images while evoking a tone down effect and regional dynamics. The aspects are similar to the principal traits of ‘snapshots’; regardless of the artist’s intention, it plays the significant role of an indicator denoting that the image’s resources are photographs. Having the amplitude which pivots on the range of a wrist’s snaps, the ‘vertical and horizontal oscillation of the brush’ is overlaid on the plane. It has a possibility of perceiving the area as a sectional abstract painting if we deliberately divided the plane.
Moreover, the oscillation sometimes decides the tonality of each work, as it evenly appears on the entire surface without a vacant space. Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) said the horizontals give cold and flat resonance (Grundklänge) to the basic plane while the verticals impart a sense of warmth and height. In addition to the edges of canvases uniformly painted in light purple, the afterglow of the artist’s neutral gaze and a sense of temperature occurred in Yoon’s paintings whose vertical and horizontal brushstrokes’ amplitudes establish a collective form by repeating and overlapping, help the viewers to understand the Kandinsky’s argument.
“Sporadic brushstrokes of pale hues—Luigi Ficacci (b. 1954)”, discovered in Francis Bacon (1561–1626)’s paintings produced in the 50s, are generally interpreted as a representation of an impromptu action, an expression of escapist atmosphere and unleashed power in contrast to realistic quality which images universally convey. This painting manner must have been vital in order to overcome the implicit limit of two dimensional figurative representations for Bacon who was gradually entering upon dealing with macro-narratives including finiteness of life or the absurd state of an existence relying on its physical condition. It is clear that Yoon’s practice does not seek the embodiment of the macro-narratives, whereas he rather sensitively extracts certain pieces out of daily life flowing in the moments without leaving any traces and crafts these fragments according to his own perception. Nevertheless, along with his mature techniques and a sophisticated selection of subjects, Yoon’s sheer determination to deliver his monologue about the innermost realm of life where upheaval and silence coexist in his images during the reinterpretation process, consequently inspires us to reflect upon the potential of contemporary paintings.
Yoon Suk One completed a B.A. in Communication Design and an M.F.A in Contemporary Art from Konkuk University, Seoul. He has held solo exhibitions at Gallery Baton, Seoul (2016); Cheongju Art Studio, Cheongju (2014); Wumin Art Center, Cheongju (2014); and Chapter II (2018). He has participated in group exhibitions at Cheongju Museum of Art, Cheongju (2019); Danwon Art Museum, Ansan (2020, 2016); Shin Museum of Art, Cheongju (2018); and Culture Station Seoul 284, Seoul (2013). Yoon is in the spotlight as the emerging contemporary painters since he was selected as a recipient of the 37th JoongAng FineArts Prize (2015) and the 18th Danwon Art Festival Award (2016). His work is included in the collection of National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; Danwon Art Museum, Ansan; Israel Tiroche DeLeon Collection; KAIST College of Business, Daejeon; and Chapter II, Seoul.
