The exhibition The Fool on the Hill is titled after Paul McCartney's (b. 1942) homonymous song released in 1967 which is about a man looking at the sun setting from a hill, observing the rotation of the Earth; a rather philosophical song. People would call this daydreamer on the hill a 'fool' but he was a wise man able to see the world as is. Astronomer Copernicus (1473–1543) discovered the Earth revolving around the Sun by looking at the latter during sunset. Physicist Ludwig Boltzmann (1844–1906) developed the notion of entropy while looking inside a cup filled with boiling tea, conjuring up the image of energetic movements of atoms and molecules. Scientists who are dubbed brilliant sages have had their enlightenments about a part of the world through questions and intuition arising during their studies on the world through their passionate eyes, not through calculative reasoning. What would the world be like for the artists who also leave ample margins in their perspective as much as those scientists, facing the world up 'on the hill'? The Fool on the Hill show attempts to go up a different hill; 7 artists (Jiyoon Koo, MeeNa Park, Sen Chung, Tae Kyung Seo, Hyangro Yoon, Yoonhee Choi, and Han Jin) reveal their respective pictorial rule they had learned completely by themselves from the world.

MeeNa Park and Hyangro Yoon question the social regulations and conventions which we blindly follow. The abstract painting series by MeeNa Park, 'Figure Painting' (2013) sprang from the doubt the artist had on the domestic standardised scale of the F(Figure) canvas used often for portraits. It is presumed that this type of canvas was first introduced in Korea in the late 19th century, giving a range of standard size canvas according to the form of painting. Park had been curious whether the F canvas standard was actually suitable for portraits. She painted emotional imageries of a portrait on diverse sizes of the type F canvas in black and white only, using various pictorial methods to experiment with standards. Hyangro Yoon who also questions the given sizes of the canvas, as well as the border between standardised format and medium, experiments on the possibility of abstract painting along with sculpture through her free-standing painting series 'ASPKG' (2018). Yoon takes a ream of common printing paper A4(29.7 x 21 x 6 cm) as the smallest unit for her sculpture and scales it up with the same proportion to use as backdrop and explores the process of painting and sculpture mutually referencing their form and shape. This series is especially her first time appropriating an image of art history illustration under her methodology of 'Pseudo Painting' which Yoon had been pursuing consistently until present. After recomposing the illustration of abstract art history which had influenced her by using the algorithm of various image editing programs, Yoon had brought them onto a new supporter.

Jiyoon Koo and Han Jin focus on the phenomena changing constantly according to the location we set our feet on, and the relations that grow thereof. Jiyoon Koo presents paintings that portray the psychological landscape of modern cities. While we live in the metropolis, we feel the urban flow through events that we experience now, at this point. Starting from such viewpoint, Koo captures imageries that she had felt in the city where new buildings are erected, old ones get demolished and redeveloped. Against the urban landscape of repetitive generation and extinction, various formative elements of colour, line, and form create metaphors of the energy within. Han Jin had been exploring 'geological time' since 2016 while visualising objects and sensations existing yet vanishing at an unexpected moment. Han gives numerous attempts to experience first hand the endless changes of topography which cannot be sensed solely through the human body. She would feel the topography directly by going on frequent field trips over long periods to geologically specific places such as lagoon, fold-mountain range. She would also approach the subtle changes of topography mathematically, or remind herself continuously of the sensation she had in-situ by listening to music with similar rhythm as such sensation had. By doing so, Han Jin's paintings allow us to have a vague feel about the secret inner layer (stratum) of the topography, not the outer form prone to change.

Sen Chung, Tae Kyung Seo, and Yoonhee Choi subtly portray via paintings their itinerary of profound exploration into their own inner worlds. Their works do not only touch upon the individual; they naturally reflect the world since they derive from the self, living in the contemporary era. Sen Chung paints his numerous emotions, thoughts, phenomena which he had faced while staring at the blank canvas during his meditative phase. Chung expects some kind of drama to happen beyond the canvas, while he composes emotional phenomena in the air that cannot take a definite form. Along with the empty spaces exposed as the texture of linen, on which the painting pervades, we are led to gaze at the geometric form, colour tone, and small brushstrokes following the artist's unique rhythm. In the end, it creates an emotional impact. Yoonhee Choi paints the out-of-sight which is interpreted through her corporal sensation. By rubbing paint with her fingers, Choi expresses the trace of time in which the past and the present of the inner world flow whilst in entanglement in The Land of Before (2021). Recently, Choi had delved further into her internal being and begins with Go Back (2022), to slowly open up her deeply sunken emotions as if 'talking to herself,' which she could not outwardly express until now. On the other hand, Tae Kyung Seo who is in search of the self by immersing into her internal space, portrays the secret process through non-verbalised method. Without the social language or specific context for persuading the other, Seo solely reacts to her emotions spontaneously and reveals her original image full of naïveté through diverse media(painting, performance, video, deconstructed language, etc). For this exhibition, Seo presents painting in which inner energy flows through criss-crossing thin lines against bright bursts of colour planes, as well as her performance composed of non-lingual sound and gesture. The artist intends to knock on the hearts of the viewers, inviting them to listen carefully to their own inner world.

Along with the exhibition, ONE AND J. Gallery presents the improvised performance of Tae Kyung Seo and Rui Inaba on 26 November, 7 pm. Seo will express the non-verbal voice and movement in front of her paintings, and Inaba will in turn react with various noises including bass guitar sound. With mutual reactions at every moment, we wish the audience would experience a unique one-time performance never to be reproduced again in the same form at this special time and space.

Press release courtesy ONE AND J. Gallery.