Lee Houk
Written by: Paik Philgyun
Title: A White Garden and a Black Boat: An Essay to Be Sent to Lee Houk of 2023
Samjeon 1-ri followed by Samjeon 1-ri, Samjeon 2-ri, and Samjeon 2-ri. Bus announcements made in the city bus operated in Nonsan, Chungcheongnam-do, called different villages by the same name. By the time I arrived at the last stop after going down a straight road in January, it was midday of winter after taking a long rest. When the bus was making a turn after the last passenger got off, somebody ran after that departing bus. Probably because the driver did not notice the man, it went further away without delay. That man stopped running and stood still. As I watched the man, a stone that appeared out of nowhere fell on the water inside me. Buses rarely came, with one bus passing through the village just once a day and the other only five times a day, so that man had to wait all over again.
I was used to being alone on the road, but that day felt somewhat different. I was the last passenger on the bus so I waited for the next bus with the man left behind in the village. The villager told me we were close to the provincial line dividing Chungcheong-do and Jeolla-do. He added that the land was divided midway between the road that looked like it would never end and that the name of the province changes here. I walked toward the byway in the valley with the road behind me. I walked up the narrow uphill path where cars could not pass, leading to the mountain. I passed the traces of a path meant for people and another meant for animals and reached the mountainside. Then, I turned around and saw the midday sun stagnating over the valley.
I could see the empty fence along the road. Lee Houk said that many deer used to live inside that fence. The animal with a long neck and bright eyes must have withstood the wind from the ridge that blew into the valley day and night. Where have those deer gone to now? Two dogs came out of the fence instead and looked me in the eye. They stayed alert to the stuffy smell of the city coming from my body, but, regrettably, there was no way to get rid of that smell. They barked at me loudly until they could not smell the stench anymore.
The space below the high ceiling had various fitness equipment and resembled a gym used by athletes. A framed ink painting of a judo uniform leaned against a wall, and a tent was sitting next to the painting. A stack of paper on the floor revealed the traces of Lee Houk, who must have been painting there until recently.1)
In 2022, Lee moved the black boat to the white garden in Nonsan and Seoul. Heavy rain fell on the artificial pond, and the bank collapsed after being pushed by an unknown force. The garden spilled onto Korean paper on the wall and the cotton cloth covering the floor. Stones, water, flowers, and grass were scattered all over the place.
For Lee, who is drawn to a nonhuman ecosystem, exhibitions have always been an extension of his work. Unlike his work process of painting while living in the wild, art shows exhale the breath soaked with water and dirt into human society. At a glance, this seems to be symmetrical to his paintings, but the flooding of the city by the appearance of a boat that crossed the Geumgang River is the very nature of the world that has changed infinitely from the beginning. From the many series of Lee's paintings produced continuously from his early days, "Some Possibility" from the "Bones of the Wind" series, in particular, shifts in his strokes that he skillfully organizes are movements that mirror the nature of the world.
The black boat washed up in the garden is a log burning in a camp near the cities and an ark that endures the surge of waves. The time you catch your breath and prepare for another departure. The long winding cotton pocket around the boat continues to expand and contract with the injection of air into the pocket. Is it the crimpled baggage hidden deep inside the pond or the pleura of beating sunset2)? Ink painting on cotton cloth strikes a pose of a dragon about to charge forward into another world. A sense of mountain forests permeates into a thick pile of wood and chips under the body, which crossed the Geumgang River. The world inside and outside the garden meet and mingle with one another.
Then, where would Lee's footsteps that breathe with their own heart take him? The brush strokes that ran out of the garden by following the "A Tree that Runs on its Own" are the shadows of the invisible "Black Deer3)." The black deer is the subject that mediates his memory on his family gravesite, the hardship, and suffering he faced at many moments in life, the truth he was scouring beyond it, or the existence that cannot be identified in the first place in his biographical narrative. Lee was close to the deer but far away from it at the same time. From the anecdote of chasing and painting a specific cloud, clouds switch places with the black deer. If so, what messages are antlers stretched toward the sky receiving? Lee stands in the white garden and cries out to the mountains and streams, demanding an answer from the world. The title of the paintings, The Red Echo and The Blue Echo hints at waiting for something. The counterpart who corresponds to his motion and sound has not appeared yet. The crimson-colored sunset permeates the white garden, constantly delaying the time of echoes, and the blue moon rises. Only at night can I see the stones that sank below the water. It was the stone that shook the still water.
A sculpture similar to the head of Buddha was facing the plum tree grove outside the back door of his studio. A gray geometric sculpture was placed on top of a lid of jangdokdae (a platform for large clay pots for traditional sauces and condiments), adopting a posture of a guard protecting the ripening process.
In this essay, the sunset refers to the time at dawn and, at the same time, the place Lee resides in according to the old name of Nonsan, Nolmoe, meaning "the mountain where the sun sits on."
An expression from Black Deer, a novel by Han Kang.
Korean-English Translation of this book(or text etc) is supported by Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and Korea Arts Management Service
Press release courtesy Gallery Chosun.
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