Ko Chan Yong
Exhibition: August 1st-7th, 2024
Opening Reception: Saturday, August 3rd, 2024, 4-7PM
Ko Chan is from Daegu, South Korea, where all of his masterful watercolors are set.
About Ko Chan Yong:
Ko Chan Yong, a graduate of Yeungnam University, and lifetime watercolor artists; he has held 24 private exhibitions and joined invitational exhibitions and art fairs in France, Mexico, Hong Kong, Japan, China, Spain, etc. since 1987. He has been a chairman of Asia Watercolor Painting Federation Committee, a steering committee member and a judge of Korean Art Competition, a senior vice-president of Korea Watercolor Painting Association, a vice president of Korea Art Association and a president of Daegu Watercolor Painting Association. Currently, he is a consultant of Korea Watercolor Painting Association, a council adviser of Daegu Watercolor Painting Association and a president of Daegu Watercolor Painting Academy.
Art Critic
Ko Chan yong expresses the freshness of local landscapes full of grass scent. He reproduces an actual object that he catches one moment of his journey, with secretive water colors. He recalls the memories of clear landscapes of fields and mountains that he had at the moment and in the space, with his own coarse local colors that smell earth. The landscapes that are completed this way show the view native to Korea and sometimes, arouse a dreamlike mystique, or create rich lyrical descriptions on the screen through his own unique spatial interpretation. The painter makes the audience think of sincere value of nature responding to natural phenomena and the consequent changes faithfully. The waves of lights or the movement of atmosphere caused by the changing climate and ever changing shapes of objects prove that his paintings are alive. Embodiment of Korean locality. His works come from a response from nature. His landscapes are to reproduce the shapes accumulated by visual experiences of nature or phenomena created by lights, using brush. These are characterized by illusion with the flow of lights and air and continuity of colors, rather than displaying the painter's artistic desire.
As shown, the artist collects paints from nature and process them to use as colors. Although colors from earth or stones are not varied, they are appropriate to mirror our local colors by reflecting lights gracefully. Moreover, they accept each other positively rather than reacting and crashing like chemical paints. For this reason, his colors will be the best materials to show 'Korean locality' or nature of paintings. Maybe, the reason why the cave paintings made 20,000 years is are still beautiful is the painters of the times used wall painting materials extracted from nature. Likewise, his screen that seems to understand the essence of nature by using colors suitable for individual objects, shows its theme euphemistically in an exquisite figure and makes the audience fall into these mysterious paintings. His landscapes with deep local colors are real spaces, but are peaceful, psychological landscapes with no noisy events as artificial dwellings, ideal spaces to reach and realistic spaces of life, at the same time. His screen puts value on the existence of objects, not sticking to drawing and thus shows lively pictorial aura, placeness of landscapes and history regarding the meaning of ground.
The painter is trying to show sustainability by exposing traces of act instead of reproduced works, or respond to life of a medium by exposing the inside of materials as they are. This results from his scientific attitude and craftsman approach to explore shapes scientifically and observe close spatial composition and changes of shapes with the waves of lights. Variation of shapes and experiment of colors The green <Reflection II> that he made, reminds of monotone modernism paintings, but obviously, this expresses a willow tree reflected on a river that is common in any county of Korea. This shows that the painter is trying to discover new formativeness, changing shapes, experimenting colors and evolving abstraction and representation, rather than distinguishing the exteriors of landscapes. His works crossing the world of materials and the domain of non-materials through studies on materials and constant self-training make us think of true pictorial values exposing external desire and internal self-reflection secretly. Did not only the painter observe objects and think of how to express for a long time but also reproduced the value bigger than the landscape ruminating historical and humanistic meanings of objects. The aesthetic desire of the painter, who gets over figure of all objects and asks about the essence again, not sticking to results ends up as experience only, and his screen that still emits strong power in space stresses the painter's effort for the aesthetic value revealing its presence with lights and atmosphere and keeping it alive.
On the other hands, his paintings represent a stable and dynamic screen harmonizing flutters of dynamic reeds with one another, unlike the static river, as shown in <Rest>. The painter shows the mysterious power and gentle magnanimity of nature at the same time relaxing the fierce wind of surging wind with reeds or forest trees. The waving forest, the silent house with a zinc roof and the distant mountains standing firm create a familiar, but mysterious landscape. Maybe, this three layered mystique was made by an accurate understanding of phenomenon and an individual touch based on a faithful representation, and this serves as a motive for psychological adaptation required for continuity of the painter's life and the lyrical world. "Brush stroke is the secret of my water paintings" The artist's paintings draw the world of lyricism and childhood innocence hidden inside our life through precious values of the surroundings and nature. Whatever it is a village view, flower or season, his screen leads the audience to the vague memories of the past with affectionate eyes for objects and scientific colors. Starting from seeing an ideal land- scape that he has experienced during his life journey, the painter moves precious stories in it to the screen using his own color senses and unconscious expression methods. This reproduction, however, creates a very abstract screen by overlapping dreamy scenes or ideal images in the view that he sees, not describing things seen as they are.
In other words, his screen is an ideal space for a specific landscape that an imaginal scene penetrates into a familiar landscape and in the end, they are harmonized. Here, a real place is abstractly reset due to imagination and for this reason, a Korean and highly local space is reproduced. For painting, the painter's attitude towards works and sensitivity to accept nature are also important, other than works themselves. Artists must commune with nature constantly and keep a clear and bright spirit. For artists, it is important to draw an unconscious shape that is ordinary, but might be left impressively in external and internal memories of life and to express on the same time zone. Maybe, that's why the painter always sings the freshness of early morning air. It seems for him, painting is slow, but a process of communicating with himself to refine emotions and relax himself. He says 'brush stroke is the secret of my water paintings'. Considering this, his painting world during a series of landscape works through a thought of ordinary life is meaningful in its process rather than in its result, since the process of painting is mainly affected by communication with ego to reflect on oneself and empty out, not by desire for the world.
Lee Gyeong-mo