Mind space

A discourse on paintings of Choi Yoon Jung; painting as a recovery room for soul and emotions ● Choi Yoon Jung's world of painting is bright, warm and luxurious. All the species, without the slightest danger, walk out of that world and approach us. In that world, even lions, tigers and bears are not ferocious beasts any more. There are good earth and ocean on which zebras and koalas run and birds of all sorts fly. There is no domination, antagonism, conflict or alienation among animals. While they walk out of that world, there is no realistic omen that threatens the unrealistic peace. They just walk along to one direction without any discord. Sky and earth are ambiguously united in elegant change of pastel tone. There is no discord even between oceans and continents. In that world, coexistence of species is perfectly possible. Choi Yoon Jung's world of painting is bright, warm and luxurious. All the species, without the slightest danger, walk out of that world and approach us. In that world, even lions, tigers and bears are not ferocious beasts any more. There are good earth and ocean on which zebras and koalas run and birds of all sorts fly. There is no domination, antagonism, conflict or alienation among animals. While they walk out of that world, there is no realistic omen that threatens the unrealistic peace. They just walk along to one direction without any discord. Sky and earth are ambiguously united in elegant change of pastel tone. There is no discord even between oceans and continents. In that world, coexistence of species is perfectly possible.

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In this peaceful procession, there is an elephant walking slowly flopping its big ears. It appears quite often and is the alter ego of the artist, the extension of the artist's existence. Through this mysterious medium, the artist joins in the world of solidarity and accord, and communicates with an ideal world where every being is a brother with each other. In this world, elephants, lions and zebras are not those miserable creatures locked up at the zoo. They are self-portraits of modern people who crave for freedom under the oppression of constant anxiety, fear and accumulated traumas. ● This is a clue to understanding why Choi Yoon Jung's world of painting is so unrealistically bright, warm and luxurious. The artist creates this clinical world to get rid of the elements that dry up human quality and destroy peace. She creates it as a recovery room for soul and emotions to cure inflated egos that causes alienation of beings. ● What she realized by the intuition of a painter and poet, was that her painting works should be related to relaxation of tension and smoothing down scares on souls. She achieved her such purpose through two visual mechanisms.

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First, she uses pinky colors which are so mild they are close to white. She describes her colors as 'dim-light-like colors which hide darkness.' In fact, there is not much light and no shadows in her works and the colors of her works can be explained as warm, vague, obscure, which are not stimulating to eyes but bright enough to see things clearly by. A gray dawn to which unawakened and absurd reality has not reached yet! She does not cry out loud 'the heaven must be in pink color' like the Japanese author Marico Mori, but she surely separates the delicate world from the harsh reality by her mild pinky colors. ● Through this adjusted color, all the creatures in the world appear in the least segregated form we can imagine. Animals and plants are given new identities that allow more solidarity with each other in the borderline colors of night and day and brightness and darkness. And difference between species is sufficiently relaxed. In fact, some objects have their natural colors but by the blood transfusion of pink color, their identities are obscured. Such color complexation puts creatures in an osmotic position in which they accept each other more easily. In terms of color psychology, such mild pink is associated with compassion and altruism.

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Second, she is moderate in using vertical and horizontal structures, which creates feeling of stability, relaxation, slowness and rest. It is more about consoling emotion and unconscious haziness than intellectual awareness and clear consciousness, thereby tension, stress and circulatory difficulty are relaxed. And it has something to do with horizontal lines which frequently appear in her works. She uses vertical lines as well but uses horizontal lines and horizontal structures more frequently.

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Horizontal lines and horizontal structures are not just the characteristics of her works but they are gist of her artistic idea. She uses color, light and color to express equality of every being. The same light illuminates objects and background equally and evenly, and provides an equal tone. Everything is depicted in that vein in her works. An order exists but it is not vertical but horizontal order. They are going to the same direction in the same pace. Nothing is left out and nothing is a means to other.

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For Choi Yoon Jung, painting is not a passive compliance with her desire for pedantry, decoration or aestheticism. Her painting world is supported by the unrealistic vagueness, well-tuned soft mysticism. Animals with one of their eyes covered up and reiterated concentric circles that appear in her works frequently signify the distance between that world and the reality, and they also signify the contacting point between present and future and exit to phantasm. However, what is more important to the artist is that her painting is associated with other dimension. Her canvas is her vehicle to the other dimension. A vehicle for purifying and curing reality! She says primary purpose her work is purification and cure; purification because this world is filled with disgusting things and she wants to run away from it, and cure because too much hardship and resignation are required to live as a human being.

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We can react to this world in two ways; fight against or embrace. Choi Yoon Jung's paintings seem to choose the latter putting away barricades and giving accusation. It is an inevitable choice if you recognize that what the world needs is not war and triumph but purification and cure, and that is the inevitable reason for the artist to use relaxed tone, warm hue, ambiguous colors and horizontal structure. Additionally, the artist uses animals, which are inferior creatures to humans, as the representatives of that world. She focuses not on the builders of zoo but on animals locked up at the zoo. I have not seen any builder of the zoo in her paintings yet, which reminds me of her confession: "For me, art is not making something but meditating on beings." ■ Sihm, Sang Yong

Vol.20100627b | 최윤정展 / CHOIYOUNJOUNG / 崔允程 / painting