The Movement In Stillness

The Movement In Stillness

                                                               

Kim, Chong Keun

There may be two viewpoints in appreciating paintings. Some draw our eyes and some attract our mind. We can’t say which is better because each has its unique property and value. What are the paintings we enjoy appreciating through our eyes? 

The purpose of those paintings is to convey visual messages or give a pictorial weight on visible things. Included among them are the paintings of realism and impressionism. 

They are somewhat contrary to the paintings appreciated by mind. Then, what are those? They emphasize immanent concepts rather than the visible forms or colors of the object. The paintings of the postmodern style using languages may belong to them.

There are Park, Daa Won`s paintings accomplished by some uncommon but familiar touches. The natural brushes without any order and restraint make the profound and unique painting. Water soaks in and gets extremely washy, and finally only the vague images of the traces remain on the canvas. 

But the images remind us of some hidden shape strongly. It is the whole impression of Park, Daa Won’s recent paintings of that style as the transition from lyric abstract, and I read the fresh facets of oriental arts gained by long contemplation.

I had an interest in the unique simplicity and brevity expressed in the swift touch and orderly brush just as she refined her sprit and drew at a breath. Continuously reviewing her paintings with endless artistic passion, she just passes by somewhat gorgeous, static, and poetic paintings with lyric images. So, now we meet the silent world fully filled with more concise and elliptical languages.

In the refined silence gained at a breath, we can see a flash of sensitivity and experience the vividness of play which is free like a poem with inner rhythm.

Park doesn’t give the visual pleasure of the visible object she demands us to imagine and conceive through her extremely temperate paintings. She proposes to see and also think when we appreciate artworks.

With all the intemperate images of kitsches in the world, her paintings are very calm as if she meditates on visual things. She allows only a little visual pleasure that she scatters the shade of color well in the order to adequately control the whole space of painting and makes full use of blank space.

But her space is not trivial because it is the significant space where tense speed survives. A feeling of stillness spreads out and uncontrollably opens to both extremities. She defines arts as play. 

To the artist, painting is the play of life with which humans enjoy. So, it is not the goal but the expression of humans created by play.

Therefore, she shows free brushes by destroying the formality and basic rules of painting, which confuse but refresh us.

Especially her recent paintings are very laconic and she lays most stresses on the elegant but even dry mono tone. Those abstract paintings seem drawings or unfinished paintings. 

She expresses the pure spirit of mono tone style considered to absolutely unify the universe from the era of 六朝(sic kimdoms). 

And Park uses such a unique technique as she describes the object by only a few pictorial elements. Her art style is close to the oriental thought of arts. 郭熙(Gwak-Hee) and 蘇軾(So-Sik), art theorists of the era of 北宋(Northern Song), noticed how artists revealed the object. 蘇軾(So-Sik) emphasized the propositions of 成竹在胸 and 身與竹化 in arts. 

It means that the images should be in the mind of artists before the artists first. That is, the bamboo is achieved by 執筆 and 熟視. Park, Daa Won’s paintings are contiguous to that concept. Park says in the preface of her own writing as follws.

Something to deserve the gestation of life

The revival of rhythm and the amusement of free play

Of the border

To be out of the border

Let it flow

Like water, like wind

Don’t be bound

By a thing to be

As Park regards her art world as thought and ply, her painting is infinitely still. We can see both sides of her life as a seeker after truth and an artist. It is the movement in stillness. We are accustomed to the paintings which draw our eyes, but now we meet the it is a fortunate encounter in appreciating paintings, isn’t it?