BIN WOO HYUK

Strolling is a ritual he consistently practiced that enables him to reach an exaltation of emotion and encounter nature’s sublime as a human being before a painter. The act of walking, which was adopted to reduce the weight of life and heal the inner wounds caused by anguish at first, has gradually developed into a course of being fascinated with the natural environment and adjusting his aesthetic direction. The act of walking, adopted to reduce the weight of life and heal the inner wounds, caused by anguish at first, has gradually developed into a course of being fascinated with the natural environment and adjusting his aesthetic direction. As a result, he realized the significance of visiting the woods frequently, meditating there, and delivering the experience onto canvases. The habitual activity has continued in the Tiergarten park close to his residence after settling in Berlin.

“I think my mind becomes clearer when I am in the presence of nature. Unfortunately, the realization of my sensations is always a very painful process with me. I can’t seem to express the intensity which beats in upon my senses. I haven’t at my command the magnificent richness of color which enlivens Nature.” — Cézanne on painting

This confessional comment of Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) sounds like a monologue full of agony every painter whose description target is natural sights would have. From the beginning of the current painting style, Bin has tried to figure out how to convey the landscape seen onto a two-dimensional surface. How to skip and abbreviate invisible information of actual scenes. And how his selected methodology can transform the essence of wilderness into description over a canvas intact. In this context, it is intriguing that Bin attempted to demonstrate microscopic objects, such as patches of the water surface or moss growing on old trees, in vivid colors to highlight their abstract aspects instead of the erstwhile approach that concentrated on a broad expanse of sceneries. Easily found in ecology, the fractal shape whose simple structure’s self-repeating establishes the entire figure is one of the phenomena that can articulate this new pictorial attempt by Bin Woo Hyuk. By paying more attention to portraying the fundamental unit of a target, which forms its whole image, than the target itself, he may have intended to evoke Proust’s Madeleine Effect that increases the possibility of which the scenes the artist captured previously turn out to be retrievals to the viewer.

Die Eberjagd (2023), the same title as the exhibition, is a huge-scaled drawing consisting of forty-nine pieces portraying a Tiergarten Park statue. The statue had been observed closely at his ritual strolling time during the resting period mentioned above when he had suffered a poor condition on his shoulder due to calcific tendinitis; as his shoulder entered the recovery phase, Bin decided to paint it. Each charcoal drawing plays one part in completing the entire picture and, by extension, allows the viewer to detect the lapse of time and the changes of seasons underneath its façade. Apart from the pieces presenting a human figure holding a spear, the mode of juxtaposing independent elements, appearing self-closed and half-abstract, is similar to his other works finished around the same period.

Bin Woo Hyuk (b. 1981) lives and works in Berlin. He received a BFA and an MFA from the Korea National University of Arts, School of Visual Arts, KR, and studied at the College of Fine Arts, Seoul National University, KR. Bin has held solo exhibitions at Gallery Baton, KR (2014, 2017, 2021); Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art(GMoMA), KR (2018); OCI Museum of Art, KR (2014); and Chapter II, KR (2019). He has participated in exhibitions at Seoul Museum of Art(SeMA), KR (2021); Chang Ucchin Museum of Art (2020); Sungkok Art Museum (2016); and etc. Bin Woo Hyuk has been a BBK Berlin-Professional Association of Visual Artists Berlin member since 2021. His work is represented in the collections of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, KR; SeMA, KR; GMoMA, KR; OCI Museum of Art, KR; Chapter II, KR; and Maryland Institute College of Art, USA.