List

PoIy-Painting," or the Body, Flesh, and Skin of Seungtaik Jang

Kho Chung-hwan / art critic

1. The German philosopher Heideaser wrote that the meaning of art could be found in the relationship between the earth and the world, where the earth hides the truth, which is the ultimate meaning of art, and the world reveals it. Truth is truth, however, when it is hidden in the earth, but when it is revealed in the world it becomes fiction. Truth exists in the mystery of darkness, and in the brilliance of light it is revealed as death and the sun. If this is so, what is the truth that is revealed in death and the sun? The answer belongs to one of Plato's evocations: a thing is not the truth, but recalls it as truth in death and in the sun.

The essence of art is in its possession of an inner truth that the world of meaning and intellect has yet to traP, that the world itself has yet to trap in outer forms and surfaces. When the world of meaning and intellect does trap it in some way, though, the truth can be taken as the truth in the guise of form and surface, it can be taken as art. This shows that art that seeks the meaning of the relationship between the earth and the world is from the beainnina based on an impossibility, for art implies a handicapped language that doesn't allow itseIf to be trapped by the world of meaning and intellect.

The work of Seungtaik Jang is situated at the point where form and surface are revealed from outside, where meaning and intellect collapse. Even though this implies a minimum of form, he communicates something before the form as object based on the impossibility of handicapped language. What is the meaning of the point where form and surface are erased and meaning and intellect coIIapse? I'm talking about the point where one [oses the basis for a general, objective, and common meaning that could be communicated. This is the point where subjectivity is death and objectivity is life, where subjectivity is buried in subjectivity and objectivity, in the fusion of subjectivity and objectivity, where the frontiers of subjectivity and objectivity are erased.

Thus, the artist designates as neutral space or the frontier of the ambiguous the relationships between meaning and confusion, or matter before it contains meaning, and between subjectivity and objectivity, the earth and the world, truth and fiction. For the artist, the ambiguous frontier is an axis for his work, and an awareness of the world he faces with a tenacious subjectivity, the meaning of his existence that refuses to be trapped by the spectator. And thus, the artist finds himself at the frontier of ambiguity, between frontier and frontier, where he creates matter and meaning.

This neutral space, ambiguous frontier, and matter before meaning -- something before meaning -- are set in the same context as the gray color that fiIIs the entire canvas of the artist. Gray is ideology and sensitivity, and ideology is a sensitivity that is an ideological expression making the artist doubt the sensitivity of the world, one that the artist reveals and distances himself from. In reality, the artist controls the density of color by adding white to atI colors. This reflects his desire to escape clear meaning as clear color, In this way, by placing himself in a situation of denying the present -- he denies white by using gray -- he practices an asceticism that maintains tension, In effect, gray matter is the skeptical mind doubting the sensitivity of the world, an ascetic who abstains from throwing himself into the sensational in the world.

In general, when you add white to another color, it become opaque and impure, yet in the artist's painting, the addition of gray makes everything become sensitive, clear, and transparent. This reality is the result of the addition of nothing but light. From the early to the late nineties, the artist's work takes on power as it functions in different lights, and different materials such as paraffin, wax, oil, resin, and, recently, Polyester film and PlexigIas. These are all semi-opaque materials that contain light instead of allowing light to pass through it completely. They overlap with the ambiguous frontier of gray whose meaning is passive, timid, and self-protecting sentiment that confronts ambiguous meaning with clear meaning.

If this is so, what is the truth that implies the impossibility of beginnings, of neutral space, of the ambiguous frontier, or of matter before meaning? No words can express a religious aura and the confrontation of the passive self with absolute existence. For the artist, absolute existence is sentiment, MaIevitch, Mondrian, and Canne, Judd with his minimaUst sculptures, and the critics Element Greenberg, with his discussion of flat shapes, and Michael Fried with his "literal objects" all postulated geology as absolute existence of absolute form, all devoted themselves to ultimate principles and the independence of art. On the other hand, sentiment as absolute existence for the artist slips to the outside of the independence of art.

2. Chang reduces the world to a clear meaning -- communication of the self " and mixes into handicapped language the monologue of his style. He draws into himself a reduced world that is now clear, and deconstructs it into simple matter. Sentiment is the instrument of this process that personalizes a series. He constructs once more a new world as a sentiment on a gray and ambiguous horizon, a world that is closer to a supposition or an absolute collapsing the world of the self instead of signifying the capacity or the essential element that the media, the genre, the technique, or the method of painting demands.
This goes beyond simple supposition, however, because it is something direct that comes from the viotent confrontation with matter more than with an abstract, conceptual direction, something that directly crosses a conceptual point. Thus, like the artist's conscience and impressions of the world, the canvas that seems to see the endless, sensitive sea at the bottom of which the consciousness has sunk, the image of the sea recalls absolute existence and values that cannot be expressed in words, and sentiments that are beyond reality, It also recalls the romantic heritage that saw --1hat dreamed of -- infinity in the infinite, that which held absolute existence beyond reality. At the same time, it recalls a fog whose density prevents one from seeing any distance, an image of fog recalling forgetfulness as an original form of memory, unconsciousness as an original form of consciousness.

One seems to see, moreover, an active moment before shapes in daylight become shapes, or to see the moment where existence hardly exists, where it is in almost invisible pieces, full of humidity in the molecule-filled air. As for color, there is a blue whose depths are impossible to guess at, a sickly violet that, in spite of its usefulness, belongs to a milky tint that becomes more and more transparent. As for the time, it is dawn. Dawn is not a color but a kind of presentiment of color. The clear and transparent consciousness of dawn encourages a sad sensibility embodied in the gray and the milky violet color and the deep blue. It's ironic that the artist's act of confronting the uncertain world with its transparent consciousness demands a certain dose of sad and sickish sensibility.

The artist's canvas recalls the body, the flesh, and the skin of the painting. This is indeed a milky, transparent, and fleshtoned canvas in which the artist caresses the body of the painting by putting his hand out firmly. He puts himself into the flesh of the painting. Here, the painting's body, flesh, and skin are different from its face. Whereas the face is the product of a visual ideology that dictates an identity, the body, the flesh, and the skin are palpable horizons set on every different and anonymous thing. The body, the flesh, and the skin are feminine. The artist calls his paintings "she." She has a skin that is the color of flesh and milky transparency, instead of being a name on an anonymous horizon.

The whole in the painting recalls a delicate skin. Its inaudible trembling recalls the habit of memory crossing the frontier of forgetfulness and remembering, the habit of consciousness and perception crossing the frontier of unconsciousness and consciousness. Above all, it recalls the hollow, the fauIt, the crack, the hole in the body of the painting that avoids the Self-regulating habit that defines painting.

The artist calls his work "poly-painting." Poty-painting means more or less painting at a middle level, which means polyester film, Plexiglas, and painting at a middle level directing a tangible process aimed at the ambiguous frontier and signifying a certain horizon where the result of regret and the meaning of the existence of alt painting is changed and superposed,more than anything, this means that a certain point where the heritage of a painting regrets modernism collapses among the heritage of images received from the past. And the artist, by adding sexual desire to a painting that is an instrument of the body, the flesh, and the skin, transforms a painting that regrets its modernism.

Translation Chans Youns-Hae

Preface of gallery YEH exhibition in 2001.