The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea has continuously organized large scale retrospectives of great artists who have constructed their own original art world in Korean contemporary art. Youn Myeung-Ro: Traces of the Spirit presents the oeuvre of Youn Myeung-Ro (b. 1936), an artist who explored new methodologies of expression in abstract painting through his 50 years of art practice from late 1950s to present.
From his Informel abstract paintings in early 1960s to his Crack series in 1970s - which symbolized the destruction and chaos in human relationships and social structure through the accidental phenomenon of cracking - Youn went through a fervent period of formal experimentation in order to find his own methodologies of expression. In 1980s, his Ollejit series - a word which combines object with action - explored the possibilities in the contemporary expression of traditional aesthetics. Through Anonymous Land series in 1990s, Youn presented dramatic and fierce abstract paintings charged with magnificent energy of nature. The works in Homage to Gyeomjae series in 2000s brim with the abundant energy of freedom and meditation, with brush strokes that contemplate the world in deep communion with nature. This tendency has been continuing on to Youn's mature abstract paintings today which seem to have penetrated the core of the artist's subconsciousness.
Youn's work has continuously undergone transitions, letting out the traces of thought engraved in the depth of the artist's body and mind. His works demonstrate the dramatic transitions in birth and growth, passion and eruption, and maturation and contemplation. Such transformations in Youn's work are an outcome of the artist's passion and will to pursue new methodologies and expressions, supported by his unyielding energy and diligence. Youn's work testifies to the creative energy and mindset of an artist who strives to construct an original world of painting and grow as an artist through change.
1960s
Youn's early works in 1960s demonstrate Informel abstract painting expressions that swept through the Korean art world at the time. Characterized by dark color tone and sense of materiality in the medium, Youn's representative early works of this period include Wall A (1959), which was based on the novel Wall by Jean-Paul Sartre, Painting M.10 (1963) which was exhibited in Biennale de Paris, and Tattoo 64-1, which depicted a figure crying out. His early works take the titles like Original Sin, Stone Age and Tattoo, etc. This roots from Youn's denial for existing order and style, as well as his yearning for unknown and untrodden world and shamanistic and primeval roots. For Youn, 1960s was a period of intense struggle to establish his identity as an artist in the gloomy and impoverished social circumstances of the time. It was also a period of various formal and material experimentations to claim his own artistic roots in the explosive trends of Informel abstract style.
1970s
In the Ruler and Crack series in 1970s, the passionate emotional gestures of expressionistic abstract paintings in 1960s is subdued and replaced by geometric forms in monochromatic colors like slate grey and white. Youn expressed that the 'ruler' symbolizes the regulations and orders of the world, and that his work visualizes the reality in which such regulations and orders are collapsed and deteriorated. In Crack series which followed, Youn started applying the chemical and material phenomenon of cracking he discovered while working on Ruler series, and began demonstrating a new form of paintings. Crack series demonstrates the artist's elaborate compositional intention underneath what seems accidential and unintended. The material phenomenon of 'cracking' which fills the entire surface the painting took place under Youn's careful purpose.
1980s
Youn presented Ollejit series in 1980s. The word Ollejit is a compound Korean word of Olle, which means the reel for kite thread reel, and Jit, which means a certain action. It also comes from the Korean indigenous comb called Ollebit (wide-tooth comb). The element of chance in the material phenomenon in the Crack series in 1970s is replaced by dynamic expressions created through repetition of physical gestures. Youn constructed the entire surface of his canvas with tightly weaved lines of acrylic and ink as if he were weaving fabric. The repetition of brush strokes form various layers, and construct a solid surface of entangled mesh. The Ollejit series of mid-1980s shows a new energy of transition, through the composition of empty spaces as if to suggest a literary painting, and the delightful emancipated flow of lines.
1990s
Working in a large storage in Bugang, Chungcheonbuk-do in 1990, Youn started to produce a new form of work, expressing the sense of awe he felt in his deep communion with grand nature, immersing his entire body into the land of his large canvases. It was as if the fierce expressive desires lying dormant in the artist had powerfully erupted on the huge canvases through the primitive energy of nature. Traversing across his paintings like an explorer in an unknown land, Youn poured out the intense vitality of primitive nature on the canvas. The 'anonymous land' Youn expressed is charged with the energy of solid spines of massive mountain ranges and gushes of foamy waves of life, created from the wriggling of the earth at the very beginning of the time.
2000s and After
In Youn's Homage to Gyeomjae series produced in 2000s, the powerful energy demonstrated in his Anonymous Land is subdued and replaced by gestures of more contemplative and meditative abstract painting style. Homage to Gyeomjae series was produced by coloring over linen or cotton with acrylic paint, applying fine ground iron shavings with brush and knife, and wiping it off with a cloth to create an image. The dark grey iron shavings react to air, oxidizing and showing subtle changes in color in time. Following Homage to Gyeomjae, Youn's works started to show various transformed abstract paintings that suggest the innate traits of nature, including The Anima, Windy Day, From Winter into Spring, and From Plateau. Youn's recent works seem to have transcended all intentions in expressions, and arrived at a state of subconsciousness and mature expressive style.
