tansaekhwa - Resonance by Brush Touches

Tansaekhwa

Resonance by Brush Touches

Yoon Jin Sup

Art of Tansaekhwa

Now here - Becoming   PARK DAA WON

Art of Tansaekhwa

Now here - PARK DAA WON

 Understanding of Park Daa Won's recent works of art should premised on comprehension of her early works in advance. The reason is because when there are not so few artists who show the world of calligraphic abstraction, it should be explained what are Park Daa Won's artistic characteristics which form her paintings' basis in order for her works to be differentiated from others.

   Then where do the line drawings like the current ones of her --dashing off with one stroke of a brush--originate from First of all I would like to note its origin from her series of works she drew in the late 1990s, for drawings titled Interface which associate juvenile pictures show the world of play through free brush lines. 

Art of Tansaekhwa

Now here - PARK DAA WON

 They are not smuch the results of her will power to express or describe something obviously as the outcomes of revealing purposelessness of actions itself, which shows that the cardinal point of her drawings is play spirit. 

 Johan Huizinga, a Dutch historian of culture, coined a term Homo Ludens and noticed that this playfulness is a characteristic which is the basis of all cultures of human kind. Even she persisted that play was a concept which preceded culture and tried to prove that play was the most basic behavior of humans.

   Park Daa Won paid attention to playfulness in paintings through a series of works she produced in the late 1990s. Her paintings of those days, which reminded appreciators of juvenile paintings, attempted to explore the origin of her mental states through drawings by free lines, episodes lying behind the unconscious, and random behaviors which associate cave paintings. 

 The series of paintings she attempted in the early 2000s are the results of paying attention to brush lines originating from her early works, except for backgrounds. 

 From this period, she changed her direction into providing line drawings by handwriting. They consist of single colors such as black, diluted black, or yellow. 

 That way her canvases became clearer and more bright. On the canvases of single colors, her spirit sorely concentrated on  modeling through performances and formation to be created by traces of performances. And it unfolded in the way of finding out an answer for a basic question of what a picture is, which is similar to a question asked by artists with a tendency of calligraphic abstraction.

Art of Tansaekhwa

Now here in Blue  - PARK DAA WON

   Her aesthetic traits in her paintings around that time are related with effects that appear when spontaneous touches are done on canvases. Such effects contain different looks according to the depths of colors ; for example, spreading effects associating dying of materials for colored cloth, or parting effects of the tip of a brush in the use of thick Chinese ink are representative. The atmosphere of calligraphic abstraction in her works is closely related with her personal background when she was a child and a youth. Her parents had a lot of interest in collecting works of art and books on the art, so she spent her youth surrounded by Western paintings and books on art. 

 Her parents' collections include many great masters' pieces like Seo Byung Oh (1862-1935), who is a prominent figure in Yeongnam paintings in literary artists' styles, and Seo Dong Gyun. She was taught by Seo Dong Gyun  according to her mother's will, even though it lasted for a brief time period. At the time she engraved in her mind his teaching that lines are drawn by one's heart. However, this artist considers that more direct beginning of drawing such pictures was the shock she felt when she appreciated Sehando by Kim Jeong Hui in her college years. When she encountered this painting, she thought certain sort of thrill came in contact with some temperament inherent in her mind.

     What do her spontaneous lines which she draw at one moment mean Lines drawn by an artist have their own meanings and looks. Evaluating a painting's grace, qualitative values, or artistry is up to professional interpreters like critics. It is true for judgment of aesthetic values. Then, what can judgement of her works be made based on First of all, I would like to pay attention to liberated aspects of lines which appear in relaxed consciousness.

    This means that she started to pursue the state of clear mind--that is to say, nothing in Buddhism--beyond playful characteristics which had dominated her ; doesn't this mean the state of Nirvana while emptying one's mind.

Art of Tansaekhwa

Now here - Becoming  PARK DAA WON

    What is Nirvana According to one explanation, Nirvana is there is nothing with silence and so there is no form among the nature of Buddha. Because there is no form, there is nothing to do and there is no agony of living and dying, so it is pleasant. Nirvana is neither living nor dying. 

Because living things did not remove anxiety, they are born with good bodies due to good Karma of doing good work and born with bad bodies due to bad Karma of doing bad work. Whereas they undergo continuous pain while living and dying again and again, Buddha does not live nor die. So Buddha said Nirvana is pleasant.   

    Her works pursue states as they are, without any discrimination. As if performing self-discipline before drawing a painting in order to reveal the state of indiscrimination, she calms herself and fall into meditation. Her lines are free from the world's complicated judgments. So the lines she draw exist independently on a single, transparent background.

     Park Daa Won noted, I hope humans' time, history, and lives can be expressed between lines. Here if the time and history she mentioned means some universal beginning in humans' lives, the lines she drew would be some condensed analogy of them. For, as some stated, whereas a history is individual, the art like poetry or pictures are universal.

    As the subject of her work now and here implies the overlapping of two chances of here we step on and now when we are breathing, she is opening the horizon from her existential and independent position. 

    Her paintings are statements of resonance revealed by touches of brushes. How are touches of brushes resonant Is it possible to introduce this word which shows auditory effects to modeling When a brush passes the surface of a plane and finally parts with it, even though the brush does not leave its trace, its aftereffect remains on the plane. It is as if the same kind of aftereffect has disappeared but wanders about remaining somewhere. 

 A silent event which occurred now and here--hic et nunc--causes a silent echo like a wavelength of a wave. A dot placed and a line drawn on the canvas brings about silent wavelengths. Her paintings are statement of resonances by touches of brushes that appear when dots and lines are done on the space of a canvas.