-Barnett Newman-

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Of all our century’s art movements, Abstract Expressionism in general, and the “signature styles” of its artists in particular, rearranged the idea of subject matter- if only because they have rejected any form of “realism” in the sense of depicting objects of quotidian visual experience. That decided, they had no other “subject” than what made them, as indivisuals, human. Each found their abstract equivalent of a self-portrait, and they painted that reality-that song of the self- with a passion, bravura, and decisiveness uneqaled in modern art.

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Ms. paik believed that looking at a painting should be a spiritual experience. And her paintings are transcendent, discloseing the presence of a high philosophical truth through the juxtaposition of colors and textures. Her unique reductive aesthetic explores the use of color relationships on a large-scale surface or somethings as a single monochromatic surface. In either case, her paintings are rich in over 8 layers of texture and carefully considered in terms of their visual consept and proportion to scalel. She intuitively measures the space of her paintings by way of cloror.Through color in relation to form, she goes in search of the work’s visual equivalence. Her large-scale traditional Korean colors- such as yellows, green red, ultramarine and white- offer a strond visual coherence between two unequal planes positioned in tandem to one another.

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Recently, she reduced the size of her works (Life 3 Series, 2003) to the range of 8″X14″, but she put 9 pieces altogether with rich texture. She uses acrylic on hemp cloth leaving it raw with the thread on the surface. These threads act as an extension of herself. Somthings the paintings start form the traditional rhythm of conflict between real life and dream, and suggest an endless dismantling. This often painful experience leads to peace and a calm destiny through scratch processing. Her repeated processing of these works explores reconciliation and coexistence, in the domain of objects.

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It is not fashionable these days to talk about universal symbols. They imply a determinism that threatens indivisual freedom on the one hand; on the other they get in the way of those academics who want to determine things for themselves. Forturnately, strong artists like Ms. Paik do not worry so much about these matters. Her paintings cojure the most powerful human images, leaving them for us to notice and acknowledge. The alternative is to explain them away with formal, sociological or politial irrelevancies, or to dismiss them as a-human aesthetic decisions beyond explanation.

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