About the paintings of Yang, Soon-Yeal
Soon-Yeal Yang, the artist, majored in oriental painting in college. Therefore she drew a lot of paintings on traditional objects, like the Four Gracious Plants, landscapes, and flowers, and in a traditional method, using korean papers, a brush and chinese ink. Especially, she displayed her ability when she drew wild flowers in a field. Through her delicate and free-spirited brush touch, her flowers showed the close proximity to the archetype of wild flowers and seemed to reflect the artist's sincere and warm mind. She had a few individual exhibitions with oriental flower paintings and drew public attention as an artist who has a world of her own.
However, from some point, her paintings began to change drastically. The material, form and subject of paintings were so different from those in the past that it was hard to believe they were painted by the same artist. One might question how the same artist's paintings could change so much and why was that happened. The answer she gave was changes of her circumstances.
"I had left An-Dong where plants and flowers on a hill were everywhere, which I had enjoyed the beauty of them so much, and I settled in Seoul. In Seoul, I kept confronting with people with so many different thoughts and dynamic or still relationships, arising from them. Naturally, my heart was filled with problems of human being, and I, who had lived in nature, and lived with nature, began to approach on fundamental problems of human being gradually."
The problem she confronted was to find a more suitable media and a way of expression to approach fundamental problems of human being and then she began to work with oil painting on a canvas. So oil painting was the way of work she chose as she began to drew her eye on a world with people in it. She gave a sincere thought to human being, human relationship and what people want and she worked on the subjects like happiness, hope, existence and desires. As the titles of her paintings suggested, her works were generally conceptual and abstract. In her paintings, figures were abstract and the space in which figures were located was unrealistic in order to express such conceptual and abstract subjects. Among her works, pieces like「Realization」and 「Adoration」are belong to this category. Since the year of 2005, she have been working on subjects mentioned above. A series of pieces entitled 'Homo Sapience' was one of her fruits in this period and she even published a book of paintings with the same title in the year 2007.
Her paintings in the book was so different from what she had drawn before. She was attempting such a big change in her middle years although it was not easy for an artist changed his or her way.
Recently, her work is showing another change. She molds figurines and chips wood to make installation work like 'Crowd'. Also she works with objet trouve (found object). They are totally different way of working from drawing. 'Objet trouve' is a method which has been used mainly in contemporary art since surrealism. It is surprising she is adopting such a far different method from what she had been using. In her work「Father」, a safety hat is 'a contracted image of every father who has made Korea today. 「Father's chair」immediately reminds us of a father in this land who was too busy to sit on a chair for a moment's rest. The method used in above works is different from that of surrealism and pop-art. it means that her interest in human being is expanding through these media and her eye on human being sharpened even more.
Giving up an already acquired and accustomed way of expression of his or her own, throwing out personal style and then attempting a new one is not only a very hard work but also an adventure. When the adventure stems from the artist's urgency, that is 'inner necessity', that adventure should be respected regardless of its result because it's the road a creative artist dare to walk. That's the road Yang, Soon-Yeal is walking now.
The artist Yang, Soon-Yeal says "I wish my work to be the place people's soul can rest even for a moment." In order to achieve her wish, to reveal her desire, she will try every medium and every way possible. I think she will got her wish ultimately. I don't know what kind of work can make her wish come true. However, what I know is this collection of her works will be a precious space that shows a part of journey she is taking to get her wish.
Kim, Yoon-Su (Art critic,Director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art)
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