Canvas Yards
Written by Park, Young taik (Professor at Kyonggi University, Art Critic)
Lee, Man soo’s recent series of works is entitled ‘Tune’. The particular Korean word he uses for this, sanjo, means “scattered tune”, even “senseless noise”...
Perhaps this title explains the way each picture overflows with poetic feeling, reverberating with rhythms and stimulating sounds of all kinds. The pictures contain poetry and music. Lee seems to have wanted to paint works from which Korean tones and rhythms ooze forth. The works are visualizations of a kind of almost iconoclastic sound, the antithesis of classical music, as if all they contain all the sounds of nature and the man-made universe, ripened to maturity. It seems Lee wants to offer us a gathering of images and sounds. But above all, these sounds and images gather into memories of the artist’s youth and hometown, spreading them out by gently stirring our senses of sight and hearing. The pictures are terribly empty, and restless.
Perhaps this title explains the way each picture overflows with poetic feeling, reverberating with rhythms and stimulating sounds of all kinds. The pictures contain poetry and music. Lee seems to have wanted to paint works from which Korean tones and rhythms ooze forth. The works are visualizations of a kind of almost iconoclastic sound, the antithesis of classical music, as if all they contain all the sounds of nature and the man-made universe, ripened to maturity. It seems Lee wants to offer us a gathering of images and sounds. But above all, these sounds and images gather into memories of the artist’s youth and hometown, spreading them out by gently stirring our senses of sight and hearing. The pictures are terribly empty, and restless.
▲1014,91x118cm, 2010
A unique background of glue applied to Korean hanji paper,followed by repeated coats of yellow clay and chalk powder, is covered in gentle, light colours. More than having been simply painted on or having soaked in, these coatings have adhered completely to the paper, forming a strong, transparent base. This skin is of a certain thickness, so that the scratches and fillings-in on its surface replace brush strokes to evoke a unique flavour of line drawing. Types of pantheistic and animistic ways of thinking are present here. In the colours and repetitive structures of this flat canvas, which has shut out both light and space, we find small forms, circulating, irrespective of centre or periphery, staring at one another or just hovering. Rather than being placed as individual entities, they are implicated within the invisible web of karma, and we interpret them as such.
Vertical traces left by drawing with a twig, used like a brush or knife or some other tool, look just the patterns left after a yard has been swept with a broom. It is mottled with the spots and afterimages of
countless relationships and traces of time engraved on the ground, tracks left by passing time, and the lives led by all sorts of creatures together with the earth/ground. Lee’s canvases are traditional Korean yards.
The nature of the yard, as a place, displays characteristics particular to Korean culture. A relatively large space, the Korean yard was a place where people, domestic and wild animals, flowers and birds lived together as one family; onto this was imposed the passing of the four seasons, and it snowed and rained and flowers fell and birds flew in to roost. It contained the footprints of our grandparents, glimmering images of their turned backs; people were born and came into it; others died, leaving the yard as the final place before the severance of links with life, and the journey to the mountain. It seems as if, suddenly feeling how he has grown older, the artist has recalled his hometown; his house with its yard. As such, Lee’s recent works have been actively filled with personal stories and narratives. His
means of expression - the juxtaposition of nature and humanity, double canvases, harmonious colours in pastel tones - are the same as before, but his recent works push these things a little into the
countless relationships and traces of time engraved on the ground, tracks left by passing time, and the lives led by all sorts of creatures together with the earth/ground. Lee’s canvases are traditional Korean yards.
The nature of the yard, as a place, displays characteristics particular to Korean culture. A relatively large space, the Korean yard was a place where people, domestic and wild animals, flowers and birds lived together as one family; onto this was imposed the passing of the four seasons, and it snowed and rained and flowers fell and birds flew in to roost. It contained the footprints of our grandparents, glimmering images of their turned backs; people were born and came into it; others died, leaving the yard as the final place before the severance of links with life, and the journey to the mountain. It seems as if, suddenly feeling how he has grown older, the artist has recalled his hometown; his house with its yard. As such, Lee’s recent works have been actively filled with personal stories and narratives. His
means of expression - the juxtaposition of nature and humanity, double canvases, harmonious colours in pastel tones - are the same as before, but his recent works push these things a little into the
background. These are pictures that are appealing and strongly decorative, while the artist’s attempt to bind traditional aesthetics and thought together with this leave us with a lasting impression.
| Placed on the back of the flowing present in which the pictures are painted, these memories of the past stop for a moment, trembling, then soon turn hard and fall like the petals of a flower. Passed time pulls itself along with secret, obscure introspection. Lee calls up the specific experiences and memories of his past, countless furrows and waves in time, onto his canvas. His pictures are like a sort of consciousness, remembering and engraving these memories. Using colours, symbols/figures, strokes of a paintbrush/broom, Lee writes down these hazy, fishy, painfully cold and numb memories and stories of a furrowed time, buried under several layers.
The furrows here are scars on the skin of an inanimate object, displaying the memories of time and life lived hitherto. The memories are furrowed. “Furrows are passageways for the relationship between all things that exist, or for consciousness; continuous tracks left by actions. They therefore converge in time, as transparent lines.” (From the artist’s notes.)
Perhaps this is why Lee’s pictures are full of delicate furrows, and bulging, winding furrows. He paints furrows with his brush/broom. This world is full Lee, Man sooof furrows. The artist is therefore saying that furrows are “proof of the existence” of all existing objects and living things. Now, formally and physically, furrows become lines and these in turn create the ultimate form. The artist has called the images of life and memories and rhythms spread continuously throughout furrows, “tunes”. As has been mentioned above, “Tune” is the title given to this series of works.
The furrows here are scars on the skin of an inanimate object, displaying the memories of time and life lived hitherto. The memories are furrowed. “Furrows are passageways for the relationship between all things that exist, or for consciousness; continuous tracks left by actions. They therefore converge in time, as transparent lines.” (From the artist’s notes.)
Perhaps this is why Lee’s pictures are full of delicate furrows, and bulging, winding furrows. He paints furrows with his brush/broom. This world is full Lee, Man sooof furrows. The artist is therefore saying that furrows are “proof of the existence” of all existing objects and living things. Now, formally and physically, furrows become lines and these in turn create the ultimate form. The artist has called the images of life and memories and rhythms spread continuously throughout furrows, “tunes”. As has been mentioned above, “Tune” is the title given to this series of works.
▲1012,91x118cm, 2010
Lee paints East Asian colours and white clay onto his flat papers and canvases, then sweeps them. This can be seen as on a par with the power of a normal hair-bristled brush. It involves filling in the furrows and peeling off the colours that he has been painting. This creates the feeling of something showy but empty, something deep, that is left after everything has gone past, after everything has been emptied and erased and decoloured over and over again. These multiple strokes of the broom/paintbrush are the countless overlapping conflicts, agonies and stories of human life, as well as a sort of therapy that washes them away. Lee has recalled a yard, some time between dawn and dusk. The yard of his
youth, to him, was “a space open to all; a place like a mirror, where all not only all life’s appearing and disappearing desires are visible, but everything in nature can be observed and thought about”. Brushing/sweeping the canvas, as if sweeping the yard, he says, “is a washing away of something;
an act of the mind that allows freedom from life’s ceaselessly welling up desires and obsessions, while ruminating on the things buried beneath”.
Thus are the colouring and decolouring repeated. The writing and erasing and painting and peeling away continue. Like the rhythm of a tune. By repetition of the process of drawing and painting and wiping away just as much as has been painted, the artist attempts to reach “a point where the furrows of life can be affirmed, and the delight of lines with a sense of rhythm and transparent colours”. This is no less than “a description of the moment of climax, and an experience of a moment of absolute emptiness”.
▲1035,41x41cm, 2010
Lee, Man soo
Graduated Painting Department at Hong-ik University, Seoul
M.F.A Painting Department at Hong-ik Graduate School, Seoul
Solo Exhibition 13 times (Seoul, Busan, Utah)
Invited Exhibition
● Things Within, Things Beyond(Kwai Fung Hin Gallery)
● Bienal de Cuenca, Ecuador
● Mythos Mythology, Total Museum, Seoul, Korea
● The Seoul Grand Art Exhibition (Seoul Museum of Art )
● Self-Portrait (Museum of Se-Jong Art Center )
● Exhibition of Trip to Greece (Savina Museum )
● The Phase and a View (Tajeon City Museum )
● Exhibition of Sino-Korean Art (Peking )
● Grand Prize artists Exhibition (National Museum of Contemporary Art)
● The Groping Youth 90' (National Museum of Contemporary Art )
● Korean Modern Painting (Ho-am Gallery )
1989 Awarded Grand Prize of Korean Fine Arts Exhibition (National Museum of
Contemporary Art)
Present; Professor of Sungshin Women's University
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