형태로부터 자유로워지기: 구름을 타고 — 신지현

Free from Form: Being on the Clouds — Jihyun Shin

A person walks into a space called canvas - full of colors, but empty of forms and fronts. There, every move they make becomes a cumulation of traces, which then constitutes a layer. Therefore the canvas can be a place of experience and trace. However, unlike a camouflage that is proposed to cover up or erase the existing layers, lines on Cho Yoojin’s canvas are rather transient, transparent, and light just like the dancing sleeves of a performer on the stage. Especially for those who argue that taking time in appreciating a painting is as integral as striking a brush to create one, the scenery unfurling on canvas can serve as a platform to manifest the feelings that words fail to capture. This article strives to explore Cho Yoojin’s art world that continues to arouse our minds by studying the form of formlessness in her abstract works and summoning senses that they inspire.

Formlessness can be translated into being free from the conventional ideas. Liberated from appearance, look, meaning, or concept, Cho’s <Some Clouds>(2020) opens a portal to the realm of her abstractions. Its seemingly dull title, <Some Clouds>, is a key to appreciating the abstract scene with dimensions of 65cm by 53cm. The implications invoked by the indefinite adjective “Some” resemble the attitude witnessed across her works - an attitude that allows viewers’ inference with the dissolving colors and lines but defies to define the shape and the object depicted on the canvas. In that sense, the title of each painting seems to offer just the slightest hint to her work. Painting as an instrument to evoke the viewer’s sensibility is a principle that penetrates the artistic world of Cho Yoojin. Aristotle once said everything on the ground is under the gaze of the above. Keeping his old wisdom in mind, we shall step into Cho Yoojin’s world - the space unfurling on the ground of canvas.

<A Daytime Moon> exhibits paintings Cho produced while spending much more time in her studio and reminiscing the moments of ordinary life in the near past such as a short walk or a trip, which were confronted and sensed through the sound and scenery. Such paintings include <Wave>, <Tipsy Birds>, <Whispering and Lights in the Dark>, <Wavering>, <Falling Stars>, <Fading Sound>, <Some Clouds>, <Swinging>, <Vanishing Flame>, <Sling on Grass>, <Puddle>, <Reflecting>, and <Walking through Clouds>. The titles have a shared quality in that they remind us of the ever-changing and the short-lived as they describe objects in constant motion, such as “Wave,” “Wind,” “Clouds,” and sound, and their dynamic state, such as “Wavering,” “Falling,” “Fading,” and “Whispering,” rather than the fixed condition. As language inevitably reflects a visual aspect of the object to which it is attached, the titles also illustrate a fluid state of wavering and scattering painted in her works. The distance between the language and Cho’s work grants room for external, or the beholder’s, contemplation and interpretation.

The scenery painted in Cho Yoojin’s works aims for expression, not representation, piling multiple linear layers on one another. These layers successfully achieve a certain degree of transparency despite the nature of oil painting, where a new stroke of color naturally covers up the previous without smearing, and do not overshadow one another. Rather, every layer affirms the previous and the next one, adding depth to the piece. The lines swerving on the canvas create the foreground and the background, building a pictorial space. In that sense, “an abstract landscape with depth” is an ironic albeit oddly convincing description of Cho Yoojin’s paintings. Now, the scenery on canvas evolves beyond the two-dimensional onto three-dimensional space.

The lines Cho Yoojin builds on canvas are not a meticulous one with preplanning and precision but a consequent trace left behind while the artist was chasing down a blurry memory lane. The trace of countless lines remind us of a dance notation that logs every move on the stage as they share a distinct methodology in which the artist turns memory, a somewhat personal and microscopic narrative, into an abstract scene. The feelings evoked by the lines and colors that fill up the canvas as soon as movements fade are as indirect as how <Falling Stars> appears, a painting the artist created reminiscing an accidental encounter with falling stars and their tails in the night sky of a meteor shower. The structural and formal elements of the work constantly go back and forth between clarity and ambiguity, sparing room for personal contemplation. Cho’s works enable viewers to be a subject of memory, desire, and sensibility. In other words, as limitless and formless as her paintings are, they are welcoming in that it encourages the beholder’s active engagement.

The word choice of the exhibition title <A Daytime Moon> may seem dissonant at first. However, considering the nature of the moon whose appearance is destined to circle around clarity and ambiguity in gradation due to the earth’s movement and the light, the title makes sense. Moreover, the moon’s ever-changing face epitomizes the absolute obedience to nature's course. Given this, the word “Some” in <Some Clouds>, the painting that opened the portal and ushered us here, might be the most accurate and embracing adjective to describe the work in which Cho Yoojin depicts the fluid state of the clouds constantly transforming themselves - into rain, snow, and fog - and yet maintaining its essence regardless of the state. “The most beautiful color can be found on the inside,” a poet, Lee Young-ju, once wrote. Maybe, it is only with a fresh lens that can dismantle the existence on Cho’s canvas that we can find myriad portals to the artist’s world. In that world, form and state and dismantling and being may be a synonym of their counterpart.