A few days ago, the James Webb Space Telescope sent clear photos depicting the mystery of the universe to all homo sapiens inhabiting the planet Earth. Somewhat like “Christmas presents that arrived on a midsummer’s night,” these images must have brought tears to the eyes of some astronomers who, witnessed the previously invisible Deep Field for the first time, or made physicists yell out in cheer by proving that Einstein’s theory of relativity works even in cosmic space. The same images, however, might have deeply frustrated priests of the Roman Curia as there was no message from God anywhere in the vast universe, while giving excitement to Buddhist monks in summer retreat as they felt that science had finally given Indra's Net of the Avatamsaka Sutra “official” status.
In this way, mysterious and rapturous photos sent from the James Webb or Hubble space telescope have touched and thrilled many hearts, but often seriously discouraged artists, who produce images based on their visual senses, and curators, who plan exhibitions based on those images. It is because photos of space make the human eye seem like a primitive, degenerate sensory organ not even remotely comparable to a telescope or microscope. The cosmic and cellular worlds observed through telescopes and microscopes are invisible to the naked eye and incomprehensible. For this very reason, art has been confined within the corporeality of the human eye and the spectrum of visible light; locked within the space of the Earth governed by Newtonian mechanics; and subjected to the anthropocentric narratives of cultural anthropology and aesthetics.
Perhaps, artists of this era clearly recognize their own limitations and possibilities arising from such constraints, resembling the Square, the protagonist of Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions who is locked in a two-dimensional plane. Flatland is a mathematics-themed novel, where the Square living in a two-dimensional world one day encounters a three-dimensional space, which inspires in him a new awareness about the world. The book served as a creative muse not only for many contemporary and later scientists, including Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking, but also for countless artists such as film director Christopher Nolan. The novel has been such an inspiration probably because it deals with fundamental questions about the “creation of the world” and the “birth of civilization” along with diverse geometric dimensions that beings inhabit.
As an artist, Yang Soon-yeal has wholeheartedly embraced the two constraints that have troubled her all her life: the biological limitations of vision and the limitations of painting as a genre confined to two-dimensional planes. Paradoxically, however, where the corporeality of humans and painting’s inability to transcend its two-dimensionality are humbly accepted, the coevolution of living and non-living things, humans and machines, and the microscopic world and the macroscopic world begins, and images on the canvas commence their relentless connection and integration. Amidst this transformation, two-dimensional planes are always in contact with spaces, which, in turn, become united with time to form an independent universe. Just as a blueprint begets a building and notes on music paper turn into a resounding symphony, the scattered time-space-material-energy continuum is powerfully integrated and presses on toward a new dimension. Genes and memes activated in this way throb with life and create a rich and majestic world. For this reason, Yang’s works are always replete with bright and vibrant waves of energy.
The greatest discovery of modern physics is the simple fact that the universe is constantly expanding. It implies that there is empty space exists. It is because the universe cannot expand without filling empty space as in the case of a fully blown ballon. In my view, the genius of Einstein lies, above all, in the fact that he imagined empty space within the universe and was convinced of its existence, at a time when there was no such thing as the Hubble Space Telescope. Interestingly, in Oriental philosophy and religion, such empty space has long been referred to as mu (無, nonexistence) or gong (空, voidness). This is where Oriental thought and Einstein's modern physics meet and where the universe captured by the James Webb telescope expands within itself. At the same time, this “empty space” is a blank canvas placed in front of Yang Soon-yeal. It is a place where time and space are mutually refracted and joined to eternally create new objects and dimensions, that is, a canvas of hers always filled with positive energy and the vibrancy of life. The aforementioned discovery about the universe shed a completely new light on the realms of religion and art, particularly Oriental religion and philosophy, which had previously been discounted as mysticism or superstition.
Einstein said that it was this “empty space,” where artistic imagination and scientific reasoning are endlessly connected and united, that made him apperceive a “cosmic religion.” Perhaps, the ultimate experience confessed by this great physicist is something resembling the concept of the ”unfathomable,” the final stage of enlightenment mentioned in the Avatamsaka Sutra. As if trying to understand the impossibility of understanding, Yang paints the unpaintable on a two-dimensional plane. Perhaps, we all are beings grappling with eternally unsolvable riddles. Yang’s Epiphany series always reminds us of this conundrum. In this respect, to me, she is like the Hubble telescope, for she has opened up her entire consciousness toward the endless universe. After all, it is not only the universe but also human beings that may remain unfathomable, that is, as eternally unsolvable mysteries.
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