EXHIBITION PREVIEW & ARTIST INTERVIEW

WOO BYOUNG YUN: SUPERPOSITION

John Junghun Lee: Since 2020, both Korea and the US have been severely affected by COVID-19. We are so grateful we could open this exhibition with you despite the harsh circumstances the pandemic brought. The works in the exhibition were done in the midst of the pandemic. Could you tell us a bit about how the pandemic was for you as an artist?

Woo Byoung Yun: It felt like a time to solely focus on my practice. With social activities being minimized or even restricted, it was natural for me to spend more time in my studio. Whether the pandemic was good or bad for me personally, it brought me many thoughts and inspirations as an artist.


JJL: Despite the difficult, unprecedented situation we were all in during 2020, you participated in many exhibitions. You even held a solo exhibition in Seoul.

WBY: Yes, I hope we artists could be more helpful in a proactive way like healthcare professionals. However, that isn’t realistically possible. I wonder if the practical role of an artist in the age of pandemic is simply to provide consolation. I wanted to create a restful moment in people’s lives with my work and exhibition. That was one of the reasons why I was so proactive with my exhibitions.




JJL: I hope this exhibition could create a healing moment for people in Los Angeles as well. Let’s talk about your work. The first impression I had of your work was the gooey yet hard texture from the plaster and its volume. How did you start working with plaster? Could you tell us about your process?

WBY: I think I had a lot of interest in texture even before I started working with plaster. When you lay a thick layer of paint, you can see the matière or the physical texture of the paint. You even see the slight shadow cast from its volume. I thought this texture was a fundamentally different thing than the pure color you may see in—let’s say—watercolor. I started with modeling paste to accentuate this texture, but soon it became more costly as my project got more ambitious. So I started working with plaster which was much cheaper and accessible.

As I continued to work with plaster, I started to see the charm of plaster as a material. Plaster may look strong and tough at first, but it is actually very fragile. This fragile character came to me as a flaw initially, as the work frequently chipped and cracked during the process. As I tried to fix these flaws, I started to find this characteristic of plaster a lot similar to mine. This duality of plaster as a material reminded me of people’s lives in some ways.

Now my work actively engages with the materiality of the plaster. I first sculpt a texture on a canvas, then color the surface with gouache. Lastly, I scratch the colored surface away to reveal the bare plaster. Both color and form come together through my action of scratching. As I continue this process, my understanding and love for plaster get deeper.




JJL: In your work, plaster functions as a medium where overlaying of contrasting qualities happen—or superposition. The duality of plaster (hardness and fragility), the duality of painting (color and texture), and the duality of a sculptural process (additive and subtractive); these dichotomies all reside in and are expressed within the materiality of plaster. I want to get more into this concept, superposition. How did you end up working with this theme?

WBY: Even from when I started drawing, I depicted contrasting themes. I would draw day and night or ocean and desert together—almost in a surrealist way. I have always thought that these dualistic concepts are contrasting yet complementary, and depicting this complementariness in one picture has been my goal. Representing a somewhat spiritual theme led me to move from figurative style to more abstract. To best depict this theme, I thought focusing on the formal qualities of painting and the materiality of plaster and paint was the right path.

As I continue to work with plaster, some parts would chip off and reveal their interiority. Some parts would remain as it is, showing the paint and its vibrant color. As I observed these two fundamentally different states of the work coexisting in one picture, I thought this was what I wanted to capture all along. Of course, I think superposition in my work is much more complex and comprehensive than what I just described. As every human being has their own unique story, this duality exists in everyone’s life. I hope my work can eventually speak more than the plaster’s duality—bringing out this inert duality in the viewer’s life.

I depicted these ideas figuratively before. Now I want to express them through my actions and the process of painting.




JJL: Could you tell me more about your action or process?

WBY: I was always interested in process art and its methodology. I believe the process is an integral part of an artwork, and each step of the process contributes to the meaning of the artwork.

I once read an interview of an artist who believed that the viewers can eventually feel what the artist ate and drank through their work. I thought it was brilliant. We aren’t able to fully understand what the artist was thinking. However, perhaps through feeling, we may get closer. My focus on action and process in my work comes from my sincere belief that feeling can mediate something essential in a work of art.


JJL: These process-focused aspects really show in your work. Superposition No.20-05-50 reminds me of furrows from the farm, maybe from a birds-eye-view. Superposition No.21-01-68 reminds me of Zen gardens, perhaps from a Japanese Buddhist temple. These are interesting references for me because both furrows and Zen gardens are physical manifestations of an action.

WBY: Yes, those are definitely what I closely look into. One of my favorite artists is Yann Arthus-Bertrand. In his book Korea from Above, Arthus-Bertrand takes bird-eye-view photographs of agricultural landscapes in Korea, such as rice fields and oyster farms. You notice how regularly and naturally patterned these fields are. Natural and artificial are in harmony. This feeling of neatness gives me aesthetic comfort. You have talked about Zen gardens, but I also think about ki-wa, traditional Korean roof tiles. The way these tiles are laid out on a traditional Korean house is breathtakingly beautiful.




JJL: Looking at your work, another reference that comes to my mind is Dansaek-hwa. It isn’t merely the formal similarity that leads me to this; it is more about your attitude towards the material and materiality in general. And it is not only Dansaek-hwa; many contemporaneous movements such as Monoha from Japan, Arte Povera from Italy, and Minimalism from the US all rediscover the Object and the Nature that coexist with humankind. In Dansaek-hwa and Monoha especially, the correspondence between humans and Nature becomes a central theme. The Dansaek-hwa or Monoha art objects reside in this liminal space between human and Nature, almost superimposed. I think plaster in your work acts similarly. Plaster may be a highly artificial material—traditionally used as an architectural material or for a sculpture. However, in your work, plaster becomes something much more natural. It becomes a vast field or a tranquil pond.

WBY: It may be presumptuous of me to say this, but I believe my work continues the conversation Dansaek-hwa sparked. From their approach to the material, focus on texture and volume, process-oriented practice, and minimalist aesthetics, I resonated a lot with their methodology and attitude while studying their work.

I am also interested in what’s beyond the material. I think about formal issues such as why a line would work aesthetically the way it is on the canvas. I think about the essence of painting and what painting means to me. I think painting always has both material and immaterial aspects in it, no matter what it depicts. Painting for me is maybe harmonizing these very different aspects. In this exhibition, I tried to explore these endless philosophical questions of art.




JJL: Listening to you, I think about formalism in art as well. Kandinsky and Malevich, for example, tried to capture human essence, spirit, and emotions through compositional, formal strategies.

WBY: In a way, I am interested in merging the East and the West. Western school of thoughts emphasizes rational and formal expression, whereas, in the East, we emphasize nuance. What I want to express in my work isn’t composition; instead, it is the lines’ flow and nuance. Maybe I can describe it more like a grain. I want my lines to feel like wind… I want to express this ineffable nuance of Nature through my painting.


JJL: It is interesting to me that you want to paint flow rather than composition. I wonder what the line-like-wind will look like in your paintings. This seems like another duality—depicting such fluid things like flow alongside plaster, which is stiff.

WBY: Maybe that’s the sensibility of me as an artist. Whenever I work, I feel like the wind is blowing towards me. Sometimes, it feels like a current of water is flowing towards me. I want to capture these feelings. Of course, I hope the viewers feel this as well.