This exhibition is a special
exhibition of the late Jung Takyoung(1937-2012) which features mainly works
gifted by the artist himself. “Versatility”is the key word descriptive of the artist chosen for this
exhibition. That an artist is versatile is not unusual at all. In particular,
it seems that there is nothing today's young artists
cannot do. Not only they demonstrate a high level of competence in using
painting skills but also they are capable of using diverse artistic practices
while pushing the boundaries of the various disciplines of the humanities and
sciences as well as those of other art forms. Today's
art scene is indeed witnessing the influx of many "Admirable
Crichton".
To those who had known Jung as one
of the representative Korean artists of abstract ink painting who started his
artistic career as a member of the Mukrimhoe in the 1960 and had devoted
himself to the production of ink paintings for about five decades, the
appearance of his so-called "Cutter Drawing" that Jung made in the 2000s and on was a surprise. The
preparation of this exhibition has brought to light that Jung’s known career as an abstract ink painter and educator who fostered
many younger students as a professor of traditional-style Korean painting at
Seoul National University informed one only the tip of the iceberg. In fact,
accomplishments of this sort were a necessity to some extent in the field of
traditional-style painting in the pre-modern period when everything started to
be subject to differentiation. It may be said that those painters who sought
after the pursuit of the tradition upheld by the Joseon literati shared the
tendency to enjoy calligraphy, seal carving, pre-modern poetry written in
Chinese, and antique collecting. Transcending this common tendency, Jung extended his artistic concerns to other art forms
including drawing, music composition and songwriting, metal craft, logo
designing, architecture, and landscaping and formulated theoretical rationales
for all these endeavors of his. In consideration also of his unrealized "path" design project, Jung was indeed an
Admirable Crichton who successfully embodied the pre-modern way of life in
which life and art were not separated from each other.
Gallery
1
Sketches and Drawings
Jung
Takyoung's interest in sketches of people in the 1950s,
evidence of his illustrative talent, developed into full-scale drawings in the
1990s. This is particularly evident in his unique manner of using knives to cut
images into strawboard panels, a method he calls "Cutter
Drawing". Jung
Takyoung's nudes featuring overlapping images of women
in dynamic poses were inspired by his experience with dancers at the
broadcasting company TBC, where he worked after completing his military service
back in 1964. His time at TBC colored his memories and his work for several
years, until he developed his own unique genre in the 2000s—Cutter Drawing on strawboard panels.
Paintings in 1960's ~ 1990's
Jung
Takyoung's early works in the 1960s, which were
included in such events as The National Art Exhibition and those hosted
by Mukrimhoe are historically significant for the way they reflect the period’s artistic tendencies. His later works, in which he completely
dismantles all elements of traditional painting, enriched the Bienal de São Paulo in 1971. He then
used his beloved ink painting style to develop an engraving-like technique in
his work, exhibiting his vision in a whole new light.
Gallery
2
Another
works
The roomy space provided at the
entrance of the second exhibition hall features Jung Takyoung 's handicraft works, known as "Mud Drawings," which are
images crafted by applying a mixture of ink, mud, and various seals. The works
on display span metal handicrafts, seals, and colored ramie fabrics to drawings
of the human form and images crafted using layers of ink and mud—a complete portrait of Jung
Takyoung 's many talents.
Forgotten Things and In Eternity
The exhibition's closing feature is
a collection of Jung Takyoung 's abstract paintings done in ink
painting style. The artist once thought that a drawing is something that
portrays a sense of longing or yearning. This notion appears to be present in
his work Forgotten Things,
which, along with his In Eternity series from
the first decade of the new millennium, has inspired critics to marvel at the
clarity and lucidity of Jung
Takyoung 's artistic
universe.
His art was not confined simply to
what was material. He was an artist who was based on the traditional in all
aspects. The artistic spirit of East Asia is founded on the strict premise of "Painting colors comes after making the plain groundwork (the
cultivation of inner virtues prior to the formation of outer beauty)", and this led him not only to the material exploration and creation
but to "self-cultivation" as
well. He avoided drinking and smoking and practiced meditation, yoga, and
calligraphy. Obviously, his life was far from this-worldliness. The artist's self-confessed wish "I will model myself after
a pipe" is pregnant with
the depths of his life that is reflective of the times without being infected
with worldliness. After all, everyone who "expresses" is the "pipe," the
channel between the input and the output. Being open to both what was inputted
and what was outputted, he was able to adopt freely various artistic tendencies
amid the turbulence of the Korean art scene. Since his outlet was open too, he
was the perfect outlet for his diverse artistic outputs in all forms and
mediums, whose limpidness and transparency could be acquired thanks to the
transparency and limpidness of the channel between the entrance and the exit,
that is, of the space where the artist was to digest what was inputted into him
and coat it with his own color. There seem to be not many artists who are
capable of transmitting to us "limpidness" and "transparency" in
this present-day society that is flooded with witty novel ideas and a variety
of sensory stimuli.
