Where did my Dynamic Squares paintings come from?
When I was an art student at Seoul National University, my family decided to emigrate to the United States, and after settling in Los Angeles I studied Western art history and Western contemporary art at UCLA. This journey from Korea to the US greatly influenced my life and art. The cultural differences were so extreme that I found myself caught between the Eastern view, philosophy and identity on the one hand and the Western way of life, education and art on the other.
I can divide my art works and life into four periods: Eighties, Nineties, early 2000s, and 2013-2022. In the Eighties, I made works heavily influenced by Cubism and Abstract Expressionism. The different perspectives of Cubism and the spontaneity of Abstract Expressionism matched well with the Taoist viewpoint. At the end of this period, I moved into a simpler geometric Minimalism.
In the Nineties, I began to focus on the form of the square. I was attracted by the square’s simplicity, geometry, perfection, and its nature as a pure man-made concept. To me the square is a symbolic form of the Western foundation of civilization. It reflects Plato’s love of geometry in his Academy and philosophy. The form of the square is so complete that I immersed myself into it and made paintings with contemplative and static squares.
From 2000 I stepped outside of squares and started to look at the shape with different perspectives. Now, the two- dimensional form of the square came to life and created three-dimensional space and movement. The collaboration of squares and movement was possible and even harmonious. That two somewhat contradictory concepts can coexist and even complement each other was a very new revelation. My two different backgrounds of East and West could coexist in my paintings and work together in a complementary manner.
But still I wanted my paintings to embrace greater randomness, dynamism and freedom in their movement and to have a natural Taoistic flow. To achieve this my paintings became larger and larger starting in 2013, and the average size of paintings from 2019 to 2022 is 25-30 feet (7.5-9 meter) long by 12-15 feet (3.5-4.5 meter) high. I barely had enough space to make these paintings in my studio, and even now I have not seen any of them properly installed. I came up with the idea of assembling the paintings on the ground outdoors and photographing them using a drone. It was only then that I could first see my paintings in their complete form.
In the process of making paintings Taoism and Zen Buddhism have inspired me, and I now understand that it is freedom that I have been pursuing in my life and art.