YOON JONGJU & HAN SUNGWOO
Endless, Nameless
December 9, 2023 - February 3, 2024
| Wherever the mind dwells apart is itself a distant place. Picking chrysanthemums at my east fence, I see South Mountain far off: air lovely at dusk, birds in flight heading home. All this means something, something absolute: whenever I start to explain it, I forget words altogether. -Tao Chien A thermometer and hygrometer display the air’s temperature and humidity inside Yoon Jongju’s studio in Daegu. Her paintings are, in their own way, also records of their environment. As Yoon pours washes of acrylic pigment over her canvases, layers set and congeal according to each atmospheric shift. She arrives at “colors that exist in the world but have no name” -- airy expanses independent of the numbers and measurements of meteorological instruments or established vocabulary. Han Sungwoo’s oil paintings have arrived at a parallel conclusion. Like Yoon’s works, Han’s works are documentations of processes and phases, with traces of buried colors and arduous brushwork locked into the oil’s coarse strata. Observations of marginal landscapes and their inhabitants have led Han to “the backstage of the stage” – his term for life’s scenes and experiences that otherwise escape notice. “This ‘outside,’' he explains, “is something that cannot be captured within existing languages.” The grayscale Pomegranate Tree offers a lone foil to the exhibition’s persistent abstraction. While Han’s layers accrue like sedimentary gradations, Yoon arranges her works in sequences and grids, evidence of a shared fixation with time’s undeniable and immaterial presence. Lao Zu, the historied Daoist philosopher, insisted that “the name that can be spoken is not the eternal name.” Phrased differently: endless, nameless experiences are the domain of abstraction. Accordingly, Han and Yoon’s compositions turn daily observations into something absolute. |
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Helen J Gallery is a contemporary art gallery based in Los Angeles. Specializing in Asian art and design, the gallery features vibrant programming and exhibitions geared towards embracing Asian culture and the diaspora. Our program aims to promote artists from various geographic locations and diverse backgrounds, foster cross-continental dialogue, and broaden the understanding of Asian culture in the Los Angeles area and beyond.
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