“Beombuck”. Until the 27th at the Bichae Art Museum in Seoul
Exhibited representative works, including Rainbow, Heart, Star, and Out of the box

Sayart.net
Maria Kim, sayart2022@gmail.com 

 

“Beombuck”, The invited exhibition of Western artist Jae-ok LEE, is being held at The Vichae Art Museum in Bangbae-dong, Seocho-GU, Seoul.

LEE, a 25-year-old mid-level artist, has recently been attracting attention with her “Beombuck” series, an image of dripping paint. She expresses the inner world and relationships of human beings with various and intense primary colors. 

She stopped painting around 2004. Because she no longer had the strength to swim over her canvas. She had a difficult four years when her energy and her instincts as a painter were exhausted.

In 2008, as soon as she accidentally saw a discarded tangerine peel, she heard her own inner voice. She thought that the torn tangerine peel was like a reflection of herself in a mirror. “I will never forget that moment. At that moment, I found my instincts as a painter. And I was overcome with a desire to paint again. ” She said.

From then on, she started drawing series related to ‘tangerine’. Her “Tangerine Dream” series are well-known paintings to the public. “Looking back, I thought the reason I was immersed in drawing the tangerine peel was the process of healing myself. I painted to overcome the two opposing emotions of hate and love that resided inside of me.”

Since then, the subject of her work has shifted from tangerine peels to tangerine kernels. “I painted other everyday objects on the canvas along with the tangerine kernels. I realized later that the paintings I wanted to draw at the time were not oranges, but everyday objects such as cars, chairs, and cups painted next to them. ” She said.

This story about her may mean that the direction of her work started from the inside out.

▲ 'Out of the box' 2022, Courteay of Vichae Art Museum

“Later, I became interested in the paint itself. I began to think that the paint itself was the artist itself. My thoughts like this were that I wanted to focus more on the essence as an artist. I covered the entire canvas with blue paint. At that time, I thought I wanted to paint the paint itself. I squeezed the paint onto the canvas and spread it out with a knife. As I went deeper into the painting, and I saw a little space and light there,” she recalled. 

▲ 'Blue' Oil on canvas, 80×80, 2017, Courteay of Vichae Art MuseumThe Tangerine series is a series of processes in which she pulls herself out of her room through the objects she feels homogeneous with. On the other hand, her “Blue Series” was another journey of her own to approach the essence of the subject.▲ Painter. Jae-ok LEE, Courtesy of Vichae Art Museum

Recently, LEE has been very interested in the properties of materials. In this exhibition, she put her own thoughts into her work. In her work, she painted a harmony that meets each other, like solids and liquids. “I wanted to paint a painting in which soft flowing paint meets a hard cup-like object and becomes one. I like to call this harmony a relationship,” she said.

LEE calls her own style of painting “soft realism”. “I don’t follow hyper-realism, Rather, I strive for the flatness of the object in my work. It’s because I don’t think realistic representation is important.”

However, her paintings hanging in the exhibition hall do not paint shadows, but rather radiate a strange charm that makes the audience feel three-dimensional. 

▲ 'Apple5' Oil on canvas, 130×80 (60호), 2021 Courtesy of Vichae Art MuseumFor “soft realism,” LEE pours oil and acrylic paints into a mug and observes them flowing down. The moment of mixing and flowing is captured like a camera angle and painted on canvas. At first glance, her paintings look like a colorful array of primary colors. But her series is completely different works.

LEE said that she would like to paint on a larger canvas in the future. “I have been playing with paint since childhood. Drawing is a habit for me to play. I want to let my old friends, the paints, play in a bigger place,” she laughed.▲ Can Series 2022, Photo by Sung-won SeokAt the end of the interview, Jae-ok LEE said, “If I can say everything, it’s not art. No matter how people interpret my work, it is inevitably up to them.”

After all, art is something that cannot be explained in words, so she said that people have to come and see and feel the work with their own eyes.

She is expected to participate in the ‘Global Art Fair Singapore 2022’ from the 3rd to the 6th of next month.

The theme of her this exhibition is “Beombuck”. In Korean, the word “Beombuck” refers to a state in which several things are mixed together and tangled.

“Beombuck” is currently being held at the Bichae Art Museum in Bangbae-dong, Seoul. In this exhibition, which runs until the 27th of this month, we can see about 30 of her representative works, including 'Rainbow', 'Heart', 'Star', and 'Out of the box'.