Light Dance / Light Field
As an artist, I have asked myself the following questions for more than thirty years: What does art mean to me? What does Tao/Beauty mean to me? Why am I making artwork? How can I find my own unique and creative art expressing the ultimate Beauty and Tao?
In terms of an art form, I personally like geometrical squares and stripes. Geometry, which was originated by Greek philosophers, has always fascinated me and has been regarded as the foundation of Western science. What’s even more interesting to me is that geometry only exists as a concept, not in reality. In my search of the most fundamental art form, I was naturally attracted to simple geometrical shapes since geometry is the prototype of all shapes and forms.
Because of their simplicity and contemplative, meditative aspects, squares and stripes became my favorite art form. However, just seeing a square as a square was not enough. I wanted to explore the square and see beyond the square. I wanted to create squares full of organic and natural Chi (氣, energy) and life. I have been on a quest to embody in my art the organic view of the Taoistic world, the spirit of Nature, dynamic Chi and life.
It took a while for me to figure out my quest, and then it was even harder to figure out how to reach my goal. When I was younger, I was filled with impetuous passion to make my dream paintings right away. Whenever I felt lost, one particular Zen poem helped me to persevere and provided me food for thought. The poem says it is impossible to get to the destination in reality, but the destination does exist and only my heart knows how to get there.
I would never have guessed 30 years ago that I would make what I do now, the new series of ‘Light Field’ and ‘Light Dance’. Not even 5 years ago. It took more than 30 years for these paintings to be born. They were born inevitably, but at the same time serendipitously, out of the constant working process.
This working process started with Abstract Expressionistic figure paintings in the 1980’s, and developed into the geometrical minimalistic series of ‘Plato and Tao’ and ‘Garden of Lao-tzu’ in the early 1990’s. Beginning in 1995, for 10 years I was busy making the ‘Kuan’ series of paintings, which are contemplations of meditative squares and stripes.
Then a big change came in 2005 with the ‘Unfoldings’ series. The squares started metamorphosing with dynamic movements. In the ‘Samadhi’ series from 2005 to 2008, the squares could stretch out as moving curved surfaces and could create undulating and dancing curves and bright airy tubes. With different perspectives, I could create endless movements of squares. Every new idea kept me going. The ‘My Little Man’ series was especially fun to make, because the dynamically moving squares appeared to be very humorous living creatures engaged in all kinds of actions. Chaeki Freya Synn, Ph.D, an art critic and Professor of Art History Keimyung University, said as follows:
“Compared to the ideological rigidity of minimalist works, Jae’s works are more organic and naturalistic, presenting an abundance of provocative ideas. Her works appear to be at a halt but moving, straight but curved, and two dimensional but three dimensional all at once. The forms are closed but open, abstract and conceptual but realistic and humorous at the same time.”
In retrospect, each birth of new paintings was only possible because of the previous paintings. Likewise, the ‘Samadhi’ series precedes the new series of ‘Light Field’ and ‘Light Dance’. Both share moving curved surfaces connected by various squares. The main idea in both series is my awareness of the interconnectedness of the world we live in. Even the East and the West are complementary and the flip side of each other. We are different manifestations but are all from one big root. We are all connected parts of something bigger.
In addition to brighter colors, ‘Light Field’ and ‘Light Dance’ works possess greater naturalness of movement in that they emulate water flowing. This reflects the way I thought more deeply about how to emulate the attitude of water in life, 上善若水 (The best goodness is like Water in the world of Tao, because Water is the closest to Tao). My thoughts become a painting.
Playing with the endless metamorphosis of squares, one day by putting together some squares I created the shape of a box. Not a closed box but a box which was opening, just like how I would want to open up myself and escape fixed conventionality and contradiction. The various shapes of opening-up boxes were like blooming flowers. The insides of boxes appeared to be empty, but were, in fact, full of light. I could understand better the ‘Great Void’ and ‘Nothingness’ in Taoism and Zen Buddhism when I replaced them with the concept of Light. I believe that inside we are full of light like these boxes. When the box is opened up, when my heart is opened up, when your heart is opened up…, we can all see the light coming out from our hearts and brightening everything around us.
Because of light, we can see physically. And the light comes from the Sun. Thus, the Sun enables us to see and create Fine Art, and is the source of all energy. Receiving all the light and energy from the Sun, each of us becomes a small universal being, a tiny copy of the Sun. My quest finding Beauty and Tao, in fact, goes parallel with finding my own Sun and its light. (I understand Tao as something very plainly natural, childlike innocence, liveliness, and as joy of life.) In the new series of ‘Light Field’ and ‘Light Dance’, the element of light was my main concern and I wanted to let it play itself freely in my paintings. As a result, it made my paintings very colorful. The color of light is not just white. It is very colorful when it is reflected through a prism. The rainbow is the best example of how colorful the light can be. It is funny to remember how much I wanted to paint the rainbow and color a painting with rainbow colors ever since I was very young. While I was making the paintings of rainbow colors I was reminded a poem entitled The Rainbow by William Wordsworth:
The Rainbow
My heart leaps up when I behold
A Rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The child is father of the man;
And I wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
I would like to share the dance of all the light, energy, joy of life, rainbow…, all of these with you. I hope you enjoy my new paintings in this exhibition.
Jae Hahn
April, 2013