You can be liberated only when you were bound to something. Even if something has autonomous power, it is difficult to sense it without any restrictions. When it comes to paintings, the frame often becomes such a restriction. We concentrate on the inner realm of the frame and try to understand the painting's internal system, but once the frame itself comes into view, a certain relationship is established between the inner and the outer world. Then, we can sense the power of something expanding and connecting. Paradoxically, a frame should exist so that our eyes travel beyond it and back and establish a relationship between the inside and outside. Sometimes such restriction turns into energy.
Seung Yul Oh's exhibition invites us to think about such relation regarding energy. An image as an object placed inside a frame and how it jumps out of it and gets scattered all over the whole venue, that is, its support; thus this repeated composition guides us to such train of thoughts. Interval Periphery displayed in the lower part of the venue monopolizes the walls of the space as its supporting background and creates architectural composition with frames as images. At a glance, the colored frame rims look like illusory structure but if you carefully follow the lines, you would realize that such illusion is not quite pursued. After trying to grasp the complex form of the frame, you expand your vision and encounter the white plane inside the frame. The white wall surface which is not normally the center of interest becomes the image inside the frame. With only the proposal of frames, the white wall which had been always there gradually starts to lose its original identity of a simple empty space.
Such theme operates more clearly when you go up the stairs to find Fortuitous Sonority in the upper space. Fortuitous Sonority has the same type of frame image in Interval Periphery, painted at the edge of the canvas. With the analogy between a clearly framed canvas and an architectural division of space, the literally interval sensation of going to and from between different natures is activated. The vision of seeing the whole open space as the support of image is being secured between the two. This sensation also continues in the series of circular forms such as Conserve Cumulus as well as in the relation operating in Aero Globule installed in the top level of the venue, spread in the entire space. Circular paper forms painted in watercolor which were well arranged inside the frame are transformed in the upper level by being scattered all over the space. After viewing the neatly arranged clustered circles, when you move about to follow the images scattered in Aero Globule, the viewer would perform the kinesthesia that this static work has created.
When you observe the scattered circles closely, they do not look as if randomly placed. At some point, there are sections where an architectural composition comes into play again to set a certain form. The notion of being scattered amid the relation between regular and irregular could be sensed. Let's imagine throwing a rubber ball in a very large space of vacuum. The thrown ball would monotonously move to the once decided direction instead of creating complex movements. However, if you throw the ball hard in a narrow space blocked by solid objects, it will bounce many times and create numerous movements of unpredictable motility. Hence a blocked space could become a support to land on. The restriction becomes the base for propulsion. The eye-catching feature in Seung Yul Oh's current exhibition compared to his previous works, can be also found from the perspective of medium. This time, there are no 3-dimensional sculptures or installation work placed on the floor, and every piece is displayed on the wall. It looks as if the tradition of painting as plane medium is set forth on purpose. Let's think about the point when the medium of painting reaches formal sophistication by depending on the support called canvas and frame. Oh seems to be even juggling with color field or monochrome painting while keeping in mind such previous tradition of genres.
The exhibition title "Guttation" means the secretion of droplets of water from the pores of plants. If a plant absorbs excessive water, it releases water through the leaves. It is about the excess of liquid. Dew is the condensation of moisture in the air, whereas guttation is the discharge from the plant, so it is not pure water but a liquid mixed with minerals. This may remind us of urine or tears. Catharsis as the power to excrete and squeeze out something. Through Oh's work, I find myself thinking of the power of liberation and excretion; the energy that can be released after being contained somewhere, crossing the boundary by sliding away, being bound and then being freed, or rather being able to be freed because of having being bound.
Press release courtesy ONE AND J. Gallery.
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