HAERI YOO

In 2006—her first gallery appearance—Yoo presented us with a wall of works on paper and paintings of small vignettes of individual, graphically rendered figures. By creating an emotional rupture in playing their sweetness against an insidious violence and darkness, Yoo introduced a dichotomy, which she then would develop in her paintings exploring increasingly the ability of paint itself to convey these states of being.

Throughout, Yoo has been using a number of materials including pencils, pastels, oil, acrylic and spray paints as well as collage elements. Her riot of media, colours and modes of application, over time, reveals a careful attention to craft, technique and an economy of form; with each stroke carrying an expressive energy, here embodying the concept of ‘chi’, as seen within the framework of traditional Korean calligraphy.

Included in the exhibition, Honeymoon Island, which measures 90 x 78 inches, for example displays a seemingly ridiculously impenetrable maelstrom of colours, shapes and lines. This visuality, to varying degrees, also applies to the other works, each demonstrating a distinct subject matter, color range and formal organisation.

Moving beyond discernible figuration, Body Hoarding refers less to a literal body, but rather the seemingly uncontrollable urge to ‘collect’ a wide range of emotions, amassed layer upon layer. With her fluctuating forms and short-circuited narratives, Yoo—in this new body of work—has freed her paintings to yet wider, possible readings.