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The Spirit of the Material |
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Jean-Louis Ferrier |
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On the one hand, there is abstraction, which is to be distinguished from abstractization (abstractisation). The former is composed of marks-achievements to be taken for themselves alone, without reference, within their material being-much as a single sign or collection of arbitrary signs. The latter is a relation to the world and to oneself, an active passage from the outside to the inside.
That being said, it seems to me that Seungtaik Jang corresponds to the latter of these two categories, both in regard to what I have seen in his recent paintings and what I know of his older works. On his canvases, there has been something of an archetype, to be understood in the sense of Jungian psychology. I do not believe that this has changed and that if he abstractizes today better than yesterday, I would be tempted to say that this is in a corresponding capacity wherein his creative abilities have become more profound. Abstract painting, as we know, is most often decorative. It is both flower of the matter and part thereof, flower of inspiration and flower of fear. In order to change the pictorial material of spirituality, it requires much effect and inner drive, and it is this which Seungtaik Jang arrives at with his work. Perhaps the most important thing is that from one work to another, a drive, a pulse (pulsion) circulates which never leaves the eye-nor the soul-in repose. There are blacks, grays, whites which, each time, captivate one's gaze, illuminating it in the sense of an inner light. This light is not only physical, but is also an intelligence, Spirit. One has-or one does not-lights upon Being, death, life. There are many lights, or at least one Light in this painting. It is precisely that which brings me to love the form that, much like the aftermath of a brilliant departure, it has assumed today. It is Matter and Spirit. Translation Hyewon Yi Preface of gallery Choi exhibition in 1990. |
The artists who fall on one or the other side of these two concepts are not lacking within the portrait of our century, following these concepts through works which often confound the two, since these artists are motivated by very different goals.