Intuitive variation of life and hope through a pictorial discourse

by Park, Myung-In (Art Critic / Korea Aesthetics Research Center)

  Artist Lee, Young-Hee has continuously endeavored to represent the true look of humans in his painting that has its foundation on a specific sense of time. When I went to his studio recently I once again found myself absorbed into his works. I gradually became close to him as I wrote reviews for his exhibitions in three occasions and I naturally analyze his paintings developing an affinity for his psychological world that was full of active symbolism, symbolism of a beauty, harmony and fantasy of beauty. I realized that my will to better comprehend his works has given much importance to aesthetical theories and analytical approaches, over my affinity for the artist himself. Therefore I decided this time I will avoid some theoretical aspects and focus on the interpretation of the artist.

  It is the aspect that is often emphasized but features in Lee, Young-Hee's paintings are nature itself and his colors are used to describe nature at the particular time of the day when the sun goes down and everything's in the dark. This conceptually symbolizes life in a dark shadow. However, fantastical colors like reds, green-blues and grey-blues used for the coloring of the sky symbolizes hopes and this particular coloring is achieved through a direct experience of light and it searches for the very essence of life. The road that is represented in his paintings is a resultant of being stepped on, scratched and shaped and it schematizes how changeful our lives are.

  As can be seen in his paintings, even though he substitutes life and hope for road and light, it does not necessarily mean he is symbolizing anything in particular. It is because the substitution is based on Lee, Young-Hee's respect for nature and rejection for arbitrary artificiality and describes the orderly identity of nature.

  Lee, Young-Hee emphasizes the fact that artificiality of molding formless nature with personal opinions and intuitions will result in disastrous chances and harm the essence of nature.

  In his paintings one can feel the touch of nature and humans. This is because his sensibility is accumulated in his works on a foundation of a mutual sympathy. It is also the result of the artist's firm intention not to destroy the order of nature and not to reinterpret it by always reminding himself of its existence around us. Nature embraces everything as they are. Like a mother's womb, there exist life and its changes. There exists energy that makes internal changes in many different objects. It is like energy created somewhere in the earth that causes things like a volcano and a waterfall. This is the transforming energy and a power of life in Lee, Young-Hee's paintings. His road and light therefore contain internal energy like a core in the earth. I believe he already comprehended the truth of the world of nature and he took the formless imagination as a taboo and was able to establish his own representational world by respecting and exploring nature.

  On this base of historical theories of nature, he completes specific ideology and a will for expressing it in his paintings. With innocent eyes, in order to penetrate complementing principles of human's private features and nature, intuition and essence, he is expressing the full view of human's life by approaching the true meaning of innocent, simple, honest objects, achieved by detailed naturalistic contemplation, In other words, Lee, Young-Hee's ideology is not something unconscious and imaginative but has a social and active characteristic that shows his attention and interest in the outside world.

  Moderner's short-sighted esthetics have now come in a saturation. They are endeavoring to approach towards abstractness and the formless, failing to keep innocence as itself and it is not different from a sort of ignorance of humans who are trying to do something to nature with their little power. Nevertheless, they justify their misdeeds and completely ignore the external mass, but it is only a contemporary action and one cannot consider it as a development. Truthful concepts do not fade away and become antiquated no matter how much time passes. Because it is truthful, it remains in history with traditional and historical aspects. However, avant-garde cannot have any meanings if the particular time passes. Because it sustained is deprived. Except using light, color and a form for dealing with colors, one cannot call them proper artists. After all abstract concepts expose their conventional aspects as time goes by. On this aspect, Lee, Young-Hee is creating his own artistic view by universal techniques through a study and exploration on himself. Therefore in this sense we can call his subject matters, roads and light which represent life and hope with so much freedom a very successful in which the artist has achieved to establish his own particular territory.

  In addition, he jumps over a limited space of a canvas by creating infinite space and expresses the mysterious cosmos, mysterious heaven, mysterious earth, mysterious psychology through intellectual intuition that is full of artistic sensibility by using techniques and mystical colors. This is an intellectual method of expressions. He is expressing his concepts or ideology that is achieved by his intuitions through speaking out the meaning of rough storms of life by soiled roads. He is also sending out a message that everyone has infinite hopes in themselves by displaying a sense of a spatial construction and colors that are filled with a sense of hope that can be considered as a source for energy of life. In this way a simple and harmonious order is created and affective sublimity radiates through its solemn quality.

  Among recent works, there is a figure painting that he has rarely done so far. It is a female figure painting that has been completed for the first time in 20 years. "I have actually done mainly figure paintings but nobody seems to realize that". Listening to Lee, Young Hee's story, I could hardly move my attention away from the figure painting that had not been completed yet. The figure had a sea-green colored face and bright eyes unlike the previous fashion that preferred orange colored faces. He walked away from figure paintings of the past, which mainly dealt with foreign models and started throwing all his attentions on the paintings that express the artist's desire for hopes projected towards human life in a shadow with their subject matters of roads. I assumed he had forgotten about figure paintings because he was absorbed into the new theme so I could not help being surprised when I found the energy coming from this figure painting. I nearly got choked by its refined exquisite beauty. The figure's eyes that are generally considered to be the most important elements in figure paintings were so deep like a lake, which I do not think anybody has ever seen before. They were so attractive that they might cause the viewer a concussion is his brain. Nevertheless he insisted he would paint only one figure painting for each exhibition and from that comment, I realized how strong his desire for roads(life) and light(hope) was and could not let my regrets go away for his figure paintings. From this, we can read an enlightening message that people's short-sighted attitudes of thinking the realistic description is old-fashioned should be corrected.

  All the usual theoretical languages we often use in art criticisms, such as academism, new expressionism, new formalism, abstract expressionism, are in fact all read in the process of enjoying Lee, Young-Hee's paintings so there is on need for criticisms to be written in a formal manner of a thesis. His paintings are indeed intuitional variation that completed life and hope in an artistic language. Now as I write for the third time on his paintings I am more familiar with Lee, Young-Hee as a person and his art and when I saw his recent figure painting, I felt like I would have no more to write on his art.

  Lee, Young-Hee's artistic view is not something that continues as if a habit. It was a natural resultant that could not have been achieved without instinct and exemplary life style as well as a great passion for art.