A flower of the abyss blooms out of suffering and silence, through the soul of the artist

 A pine tree that is thousands of years old, standing in some town, wild grasses with no name which sprout as seasons change, and the sky and the land that encompass all of nature … all seems quiet and constant. There would be no definite answer if one asks the reason why all beings are covered by the curtain of the present. Everything just lives for the day, and, as time passes by, grows, declines, blossoms in its most beautiful form, and eventually slowly fades away. What is important is that this is not the end. The boundary of formation and extinction cannot be grasped or seen, but the spirit and the soul will last forever.

 

 'NungHae,' the 10th  solo exhibition by Mee-Ok Paik, which comes after a 5-year absence from Korea during which she held exhibitions in Berlin and New York, is the "right trace" of endless questioning and searching for the root of the power to sustain the present and continue forward. That is, it does not center around a life that is lived in the present, but talks about the spirit, whose complex tangling of ties and short and long histories make appearances in the present. It is not an easy task, as what Mee-Ok Paik is trying to say cannot be expressed through direct language or the body. This is clearly revealed by her pre-work processes of design and drawing. The sensitivity acquired by inspiration is largely accepted, but afterwards, the expression of defining ideas and visualizing these as drawing proceeds very slowly and subtly. These works of Mee-Ok Paik, having named the shape of the abyss existing in herself as 'NungHae,' can be said to be the collection of a process that goes back into the distant past, all the way to the very beginning.

 

Calmness and Creation of Color Submerged in the Aesthetic Consciousness of the Artist

 Since the artist developed a fascination with Korean shamanism and Eastern philosophy, her works dealing with the roots of life itself have continued, through the themes of ‘Psychokinesis’, ‘Life Series', and 'in Resonance’. In the process of visualizing the ideas and refining the concepts upon which the works are based, the Oh-Bang colors of Korea (five colors, each representing a cardinal point plus the center) were naturally chosen, and the probing of colors earned at various times were produced in Gan-color, which contains the story of Mee-Ok Paik. As the background that enables the best expression of Oh-Bang Gan-color is cotton cloth, its weak absorption of water presents some difficulties, but the base work of meticulously filling the seams of cotton cloth proceeds. The climax is applying the color and revealing the shape at the same time. The dissolution of the shape and the obscuring of the boundaries, made as the colors meet through repetitive drawing as if drawing the original shape with a fine brush, brings forth a mysterious color. The labor-intensive fine-brush drawing of the artist, together the artist’s own unique character that becomes embodied in the work, builds in intensity and then calms in the hierarchy of time, until manifesting itself in the form of a large-scale work. The result of the colors formed at this point and the labor-intensive drawing is an aspect of the eternity that led her to break out of agony and silence; a self-blooming flower of the abyss, the 'NungHae.'

Form of the Abyss Containing Time and Space and Continuing to Eternity

  The work of Mee-Ok Paik exists on a continuum of change. Unlike many of her past exhibitions, 'NungHae' features works that include clearly-defined natural objects, such as trees, mountains, flowers, and leaves. Appearing for the first time in 10 years since 2000, when she completely dissolved the object in her work, the form of 'NungHae' is actualized in a variety of shapes. A 6-piece tree series, 100 variations of mountains and roses, and flowers interconnected with a single stem in one screen show diverse coloring processes and method according to the composition. The sketch process for the entire face before coloring may seem to be disordered, but by predicting the colors as they appears in aspects, layer by layer, the ratio of chroma and color surface is controlled and boldly composed. In the later process of coloring with a fine brush, depending on the amount of color and the drawing count, the form appears in the change of the sense of volume formed by the high and low matière. For some pieces, colors are applied by hand to express small water drops on the surface. The shape, mysteriously appearing and disappearing according to the light on the boundary that is covered and revealed by color, invokes the idea of an apparition. The visual image of the flat surface may seem simple, but the depth of color and the mystery of the shape, which is beyond the viewer’s grasp, like a mirage, provides an image that suggests an inexpressible calm and sentimental value, after finishing a journey to the distant past.

Drawing, Reality's Expressive Tool to Reflect Eternity, and its Uniqueness

Drawn on cotton canvas with acrylic paint, the works of Mee-Ok Paik could be said to belong to the genre of drawing, but a special method is chosen in the composition process. Just as a stonemason reveals the shape by constantly working the rock with hammer and chisel, the artist manifests the form of the abyss inherent in the word and the image of 'NungHae' with brush and paint. Using herself as a tool, the process of refining all images and thoughts appears as repetitive drawing. And, piling layer by layer, the hierarchy of colors formed within reveals the phantom-like form of ‘NungHae’.

 The end result includes installation and spatial works, in addition to flat surface works. The 10 masks in Oh-Bang Gan-colors, presented for the first time, are produced by directly casting the face of the artist herself. The cotton scroll that it is installed with is attached to the wall, and hangs down to form a harmony with the drawings. Eternity to a person is expressed as an imaginary object, which is definite but non-existent, like 'NungHae', meaning it exists in various forms in the time and space of reality.

 

‘NungHae’ is the image of a flower that supports itself on the mud pile underwater, and after a period of silence, allows its stems to emerge above the surface, eventually blooming with small and white petals. This is similar to the artist’s process of completing the works. The idea she selects is like a process of composition, moving towards a new world that can only be found through refined effort, and a repeated cycle of pain and bliss. The story of ‘NungHae’, which appears in the artistic world of Mee-Ok Paik after a 10-year absence, is expressed in the sensitive language that is the artist’s own. The harmony of colors, innumerably overlapping and crossing on a homogenous surface, traces of solidly piled-up brush strokes like a furious storming wave, and the sense of depth that they invoke, give us a peek at eternity. ‘NungHae’, the flower that has bloomed through endless pain and bliss in order to grasp the strand of eternity, shall keep blooming and fading, and its spirit shall continue to live.