Unfoldings.

I was born and raised in Korea and lived there until I was 19. My family moved to Los Angeles when I was in the second year of Fine Art College at Seoul National University. I attained a B.A. degree with a painting major at UCLA in 1977. My life consists of two parts: 20 formative years in Korea and the next 30 years in Los Angeles.

Korea is a homogeneous society strongly shaped by Confucian tradition. At the same time, Korea is heavily influenced by modern western civilization, especially western science. I was raised to be a Christian and attended a Christian high school for six years. All my education was geared to learning about the Bible and the West. The West meant the world. Then I was transported to the West, specifically Los Angeles. It was hell. Language, custom… things were too different. I thought I knew about the West. But no, it was not like a textbook and not even close to Hollywood movies. And, worst of all, I felt disconnected from and ignorant about my own cultural background, identity, religion and philosophy. I found myself totally lost in the cultural divide between East and West.

I desperately needed to find my own identity and cultural heritage. I needed to answer every wannabe artist’s ultimate question: “what is art?” So in the 1970’s I began to study Oriental philosophy, especially Taoism and Zen Buddhism. I was like a sponge soaking up information about my identity, art, East, West, etc. At the same time I was producing a lot of oriental brush paintings which my parents sold in order to make a living in the U.S.

In the 1980’s, I completed a series of paintings with figures, consolidating my understanding of all the schools of masters. I focused on three major interests: first, structure from cubism; second, dynamic color studies from Matisse (in this regard I was inspired by Southern California’s bright sunlight which is similar to that of Southern France); and third, free, spontaneous gestural strokes from Abstract Expressionism.

In the early and mid-1990’s, I focused on paintings without figures in my “Kuan” and “Sunyata” series. My paintings became pure abstract, metaphysical, geometric, minimal, and contemplative under the influence of Taoism and Zen Buddhism. The word “Sunyata” literally means emptiness. Just as the most essential part of music is silence, empty space is where all the visual arts originate. The empty wall always fascinates me with its unlimited possibilities. Like Tao, it is an empty vessel: it is used but never filled. The word “Kuan” is a word that means a form of simple, silent observation. It is open and does not seek any particular result. It signifies a mode of contemplation in which there is no duality between the seer and the seen. Art begins and ends with Kuan. Creating art begins with the act of seeing and being seen by an artist. Art appreciation is achieved in the act of seeing and being seen.

In the late 1990’s, after a difficult divorce, I experienced my own Renaissance.

In my paintings, I started to interact with space more actively, interlocking positive and negative space. Each stripe from my earlier paintings now became an independent bar painting which also worked as a group using wall space as an extended painting background. And then “folding” started to happen. At around the same time I started to work with irregular shapes in my “Halong” series, which was inspired by Halong Bay in Vietnam. These paintings are placed separately but together on the wall, each painting symbolizing an island in the sea.

In 2005, my work to date culminated in the “Unfoldings” series. I had experimented with similar images before, but when I finished a series of Unfoldings drawings last December, I knew immediately that I had achieved what I had been pursuing for so long. I was so excited. As soon as I completed the first batch of Unfoldings paintings, I showed the photos to Barbara and Robert Lombard of Millenia Gallery in Orlando, Florida. They fell in love with the works I showed them, which were of all colors, shapes and sizes.

Then Barbara said something which showed me that she had reacted to my Unfoldings paintings exactly as I had while I was making them. She said “I see something big. You should make it big. Real big.” Then Robert asked me whether I could make a piece large enough to fill the largest wall space in the gallery, which was 16’ high and 55’ long. I said “no problem”. This is how my Unfoldings painting titled “Millenia” was born. It is 14’ high and 45’ long and will be shown in Millenia Gallery in December. Further inspired by this urge to create large paintings, I also made some very innovative, free-standing paintings, which are 8 feet in height.

The Unfoldings series brings together all my artistic attributes in terms of form, color, surface of layered depth of field, geometry, zen, minimalism, and sculptural and architectural structure. Then one more ingredient is added - Movement. Whereas, in my Kuan series, I appreciate the contemplative, philosophical esthetics which calm me down and give me peace of mind, in my Unfoldings series the paintings make me dance. An Unfoldings painting is not a wall flower any longer. It dances with the space. It is moving by itself. It is unfolding by itself. Movement makes each painting take off into the air, cruising at a high altitude. Something happened. I just can’t stand still. I can’t help but dance. Life is wonderful. It’s truly a joy that we are alive. Unfoldings is my song and dance. Celebration of life. Tao.

Where does this dynamic, free, spontaneous and yet natural and cosmic movement come from? Abstract Expressionism? Oriental brush paintings? I believe it is the spirit of oriental calligraphy. I have literally lived with that spirit, because my mom is a master of oriental calligraphy. Oriental calligraphy is regarded as the highest art form in Asia: a combination of oriental philosophy and literature and the physical power of martial arts. The best vessel to represent the spirit of Nature, Tao.

In the East, Tao means philosophy. It means literally the pathway. Just as a pathway is created by people’s constant walking, we each accumulate Tao in our own “walking”, i.e., as we live our lives from day-to-day. In the West, philosophy means love of wisdom and truth. The truth exists apart from us - higher up like the twinkling stars at night. It belongs to the territory of a metaphysical and supreme being. However, it is very difficult to compare these two concepts, because we end up focusing only on the parts and forgetting the whole which is the main essence.

It was fun to work on Unfoldings. Work and fun became one. I became the painting. I became what I do, what I see, what I think. When I eat bread, I become bread, …when I talk to an American, I become an American, …when I talk to a Belgian, I become a Belgian, …I become one.

It’s funny that I don’t search or insist about my identity any longer. The East and the West are complementary and the flip side of each other. We are different manifestations, but from one big root. We are one. Your pain is my pain and my joy is your joy. The more we think of goodness and happiness, the more we contribute to make the world that much better and happier. It is the artist’s job to enhance the meaning of life by bringing all the reality in everyday life to a level of enlightenment, because art is a jewel of our real soul.