THE ALCHEMIST WHO SHAPES NEATNESS OF FORM THROUGH VARIED COLOR, KOOK-HYUN GA

We tend to easily judge the standard that decides the difference between representational painting and abstract painting based on whether a concrete form exists or not. It is true that it was easy on our mind decide that the work is representational if we could discern what has been depicted, or that the work is abstract if we cannot know what has been drawn or painted. However, one experiences a discomfort in the head when s/he places in front and judges in such a standard the work of the artist Kook-hyun Ga, whom people categorized with the title of representational artist without hesitation. It is because one indeed hesitates to apply the standard of representation to Kook-hyun Ga’s works. Furthermore, it is ambiguous whether it is possible to set the boundary between representation and abstraction from sincere meaning.

Modernity has become too complicated for one to accept and regard as truth what is seen and factual. Also, the modern aesthetician Denis Huisman has already said that for the complete factual description to be possible, it is impossible if the artist’s principal agent is not annihilated. Even when we look through the lens of art history, starting with the assessment that the history that has come along with the realist methodology is greatly fictional, the skepticism about the possibility of awareness about the objective object, and the possibility of objective expression, one comes to think that the questions about the possibility of the individual expression arising without purposeful end and being nothing more than the subjective view of each person that is said to be in the in-between spaces, which stick out the head, and solidifies based on the environment arising and surrounding the self, called the objective judgement, make for a difficult era.

What kind of meaning is there to speak clearly of a division between representation and abstraction in this sort of situation?

When one reads Kook-hyun Ga’s artist statement, one remembers a line from Choonsoo Kim’s poem titled, ‘Flower.’ “When I called your name, you came to me and became a flower.” Although the flowering plants that exist in the artist’s work may be nothing more than the fragment of a common existence of a flowering plant that one encounters in daily life, they are no longer considered to be common flowering plants upon being reborn as pretty and sentimental stationary object through the artist’s busy handwork.

They who have been born as splendidness with highly impressionable expressions despite being small and trivial give off a strong sense of determination through a stern self-control. What is the tight nervousness that is felt on one hand even while being images that sway in the picture and are expressed smoothly?

The images left as deep psychological traces of intuitively captured objects have specific description suppressed, and they mostly are located at the exact center.

The peculiarly strange and exquisite fields of color that complete the color schemes with not more than a few or several colors are expressed in a very refined manner, and they cause the viewer to feel substantial sturdiness. The reason is that the impression that is conveyed through the simple brevity that gives formativeness of the circle, oval, or rectangle that have been reduced to the minimal form. The division and formation of colors that appear to be tinged with highly detailed form have already driven away the realism outside the picture upon leaving the minimal form. The picture now only have the essential shape and properties that objects of reality have. His work can no longer be labeled as representation any further.

Perhaps to the eyes of the people trying to classify in that way, objects may still appear to be reality. However, object of all reality does not want to speak of the name and form of its prior existence, in the shape of its blind spot. After the hot passion that wishes to leave only the pure form of existence explodes, the picture that is gradually partitioned as the cold-hearted and meticulous rationality is cold on the other hand.

Now the flower of the artist Kook-hyun Ga is no longer a flower of reality. It was merely the object that people used to call a flower. The flower that he occupies in advance and represents is merely a lump sparking as a color the perfect phenomenon that is the line and surface called a circle.

Here the essence of the beauty that the flower had wriggles. The composition of the picture that passes through the numerous objects within landscape has become no longer important to the artist who used to mainly paint figurative and landscape works and one day found himself enjoying painting small still lives.  

It is because it is possible to give shape to all the forms of phenomena that the self seeks to contain through a kind of object. It may be difficult to express clearly the world that the artist attempts in the complex composition of various objects.

The world that is caught in the artist’s intuition is a qualitative concept and not a quantitative concept, and the effort continues to avoid losing the result of abstraction through representation even one tries to expand the kind of objects in terms of form to pack the canvas.

Even as the artist starts the journey with the realistic object, a world unique to Kook-hyun Ga is being formed, which reconstitute and do not lose the things that the self has seen, which is not what they appear to be.

In his canvas representation and abstraction already meet in one road and are diffusing into each other like good friends.

On one hand, Kook-hyun Ga writes this way in his artist statement: “They are things to be left empty. By leaving wide open spaces by simplifying even the dots, only the object and the blank space make one understand each other’s existence. The bigger the empty space the object is loving like the one who has been continually waiting.” Kook-hyun Ga’s blank space is not a simple blank space. It is already an elaborate and filled space.

The blank space that forms a close network and is in harmony with the image of the object within the picture by escaping the background meaning as reality appears indifferent yet its  sense of existence is expanded as much as the key object.

As a beholder who sees in this way, the experimental nature of the secretive picture’s construction which directs us to clearly understand the existence of the blank space is achieving a peak more so than any other time for the artist Kook-hyun Ga. The artist says that he only painted throughout his life. What would “drawing/painting” mean to him? He has obsessed on color from long time ago. A color wheel is pasted onto one of the walls of his studio.

It is probably in order to avoid falling into the limit of color based on the artist’s experience. To place a world of color that is already verified onto the canvas is not a simple matter. Kook-hyun Ga, who is said to have insisted on using only oil paint, reminisces that he may have had more time to think than to paint. He says that he spent many hours researching and experimenting the effects and methods of color. He was endlessly experimenting, comparing the properties of oil and acrylic paints and wiping off the paint off of the canvas and scratching it with a palette knife. 

It would have been difficult for acrylic paint to endure the long hours that the artist spent experimenting. It is simple why he chooses oil paint that carries the potential that the depth of sense of color soaks out, just as it matures the more as time passes. He and the paint explore each other within infinite potential and cook each other’s time. From the forked road of this devoted challenge and choice, his matured color sense comprise he canvas through a blueprint of color that absolutely no one can duplicate. This is why his work pulls the path of people’s eyes by exuding a flavor created by a unique color. It is attracted to the feast of color’s taste that he is problem-solving. Those who contemplate his paintings will simply enjoy the splendid eye’s taste of the color.

Is there still a need for the noun modifier of representational artist that used to be put in front of the artist Kook-hyun Ga?

I don’t think that this is as important as thinking of the reason why many people feel happy being in front of Kook-hyun Ga’s paintings. As the color comprising the concise form with clean color composition achieve a lucid picture, this is possible only at the stage where a person who knows the alchemy of color. In the canvas, there does not seem to be any kind of content and conflict and hesitation of form as well as contradiction. This is a secret to make people become mesmerized by the beauty of pure formativeness. The energy exuded by the sense of stability and passion of the picture, which the masterful sense that the artist was born with and training that he engaged in for a long time, frees the viewer from the anxiety that one often has had to feel while viewing contemporary art.

The new psychological ventilation as a result of color even gives the pleasure of sensation. Escaping the nature of phenomena and form, Kook-hyun Ga has now come to live in the circular world of exploration relating to color and form.

The artist’s inner world, which is arrived at through the effect of phenomenon of a singular world that representation and abstraction form in essence, simply and already is expressing the concept of modeling that is high-dimensional. The artist, whose complete concern about one’s own artistic world and the subsequent materialization are expanding in terms of the support of the general audience…. Kook-hyun Ga is a jubilant artist. It is also a happy thing to imagine in advance the joy given by mature encounter of the line, shape, and color that will be endlessly thrown in front of us in the future.

In his paintings, the neatness of the form made by the varied colors are like a chamber orchestra that knows one’s each role very well and matches the inner breathing. Now at the end of Kook-hyun Ga’s brush that performs the natural harmony of the colors, a simple kind of splendor is dancing.

Writing by Sang-hyeon Byeon

Sang-hyeon Byeon is the Professor of Aesthetics in the Art Department at the Han-nam University.