갤러리 도스 기획

이여운 ‘Modern Times’ 展

2018. 11. 14 (수) ~ 2018. 11. 19 (월)

1. 전시개요

■ 전 시 명: 갤러리 도스 기획_이여운 ‘Modern Times’ 展

■ 전시장소: 서울시 종로구 삼청로 7길 37 Gallery DOS (갤러리 도스)

■ 전시기간: 2018. 11. 14 (수) ~ 2018. 11. 19 (월) 

2. 전시내용

Esthetic Jansenism and Yuwoon Lee’s Reading of Cities 

Sangyong Shim (Ph.D., Art History/Art Critic)

   *

   There is no confusion here, no disorder. Genealogically, it is a world that carries on the spirit of ink-and-wash painting, and so there are no alluring mixtures of color, no textures or rhythms that evoke touch. Neutral buildings are represented chiefly in straight lines; like still lifes, they are stripped of most of their context. The cities invoke no narrative beyond the structures themselves, which are depicted in frontal views or with sometimes exaggerated perspective.

   Lacking confusion and disorder, this Jansenist straightness originates ironically from questions about how the modern city alienates the people living within, and how it renders them lonely ? from perceiving and reporting the tyranny of capital that holds the modern city fully in its grasp. To Yuwoon Lee, the modern city is scarcely different from Aristotle’s cave. Within it, moderns live in a state of confusing all the things that come from the absence of light ? the faintness, frustration, anxiety, wandering, and drifting ? for a life properly lived. There, the darkness 

and images of the world play the part of the “real.” Even within the breeding ground of ignorance that is the modern cave, darkness is taken for the world’s original state; shadows take the place of objects, while images play the role of reality.

   By this point, Lee’s record of urban experiences was being expressed in rather plain-spoken and literary ways, as in her 2002 work When loneliness comes to you ? showing the long shadow of a person on a street crowded with buildings ? or the 2006 piece 

Black Energy. They perhaps share their context with the slightly earlier work A paracite plant in city (2001), where the “parasitic plant” that descends suddenly over the city like a dark cloud may represent the alienation and loneliness that result come from the severing of relationships. Modern people live anonymously within vast systems ? cities representing the form of this ? and may be the first people to have accepted this way of living with its day-in, day-out routine of eating and sleeping, its lack of conversations with anyone, and to have become impossibly lonely as a result. As the Indian writer Arundhati Roy (b. 1961) has observed, loneliness has become an irreversible divine punishment for hapless transnational citizens. Crowds of people living like prisoners amongst the buildings that have taken the city over ? this is the truth that Yuwoon Lee has sought to express. 

   **

   These days, Lee has been dedicating her energies solely to buildings. She is cultivating a path of what might be called esthetic Jansenism, where the buildings’ structures and distinguishing exterior features are absent, the backgrounds and remaining peripheral factors all removed.  A branch of Catholic reformists that arose in response to the Reformation, the Jansenists were at odds with the Jesuits, who were actively involved with their communities.

Even the humanistic factors, such as the historic or anthropological references contained within the buildings, hold no great meaning here. It makes no real difference whether it is Geumsan Temple’s Mireuk Hall or a building in New York City, historic Notre Dame Cathedral or an ordinary Korean hanok building near the artist’s home. Yuwoon’s buildings are not there because they are palaces or cathedrals. They have not been summoned for some examination in architectural history terms or in the name of consumerism as famous tourist destinations. They have been summoned not because of some sort of monumentality, but solely because of their inherent esthetic qualities.

   More importantly, they are all oriented toward a common goal: an exploration of design and structure consisting solely of refined straight lines, with any variation suppressed. This stance of strictness without a hint of disorder is reminiscent of Jansenism’s yearning for purity, its attempt to adhere to a strict internal untaintedness of faith. Unlike the Jesuits and their active pursuit of social activity, the Jansenists of Port-Royal kept their distance from any form of social engagement, worldly realism, or heroism, advocating instead for a return to Paul and Augustine.

  A branch of Catholic reformists that arose in response to the Reformation, the Jansenists were at odds with the Jesuits, who were actively involved with their communities.

***

   Now they stand quite unrelated to narratives of the city and its routine tyrannies against the human being, or to narratives of real estate frenzies and the pervasive rise of power and capital. In terms of the removal of social or political context, they have been submitted to a process of Jansenist purification ? what might be called an “erasure” of context. Yet it is not only the historical or socio-political context that has been excised for the sake of this purification. The artist’s own stance and arguments in connection with them also required some conspicious straightening out. 

   In any case, they are now no longer economic or sociological reports evoking stratospheric market values or the fortunes into which their owners were born. They may for example be categorized as objects of esthetic appreciation in a different sense from any rumination on the sad narratives of people who have no hope of occupying them, except perhaps as renters. We need not look through the architectural register to find out what sort of financial company tentacles now hold them in their grasp. The artist seeks to keep her structures separate from some ideological report or indictment that deconstructs them into units of capital; she does, however, use her process of decontextualization ? of what may be called “esthetic subtraction” ? in an attempt to get the inherent esthetic quality obscured by the heavily layers of time that have settled on them. This is an esthetic not of decontextualization for the sake of deconstruction, but of decontextualization for the sake of purity. 

   As the periphery is purified by Yuwoon Lee’s esthetic subtraction ? her erasure of context ? the inherent artistry of the buildings finally heaves into view. By enabling us to savor the esthetic qualities of the things in themselves, it affords what has become a very rare form of esthetic experience in an era like today, rife as it is with esthetics of hybridity and realignment. This only underscores how Lee’s paintings are not “urban landscapes” as they are commonly understood. All of the elements that go into the landscape esthetic ? all of the qualities “worthy of a landscape” ? have been deliberately excluded: the mood, the atmosphere, the backgrounds, and so forth. Divorced from those elements that would make them into attractive “landscape art,” Lee’s buildings pursue a different kind of beauty, one that can only be achieved through fidelity to existence in themselves. Without question, this represents a very significant esthetic course ? for the essence of art is, to quote the striking words of Pierre Sansot ? the thing where you become you and I become me. 

3. 작가약력

홍익대학교 미술학과 박사 졸업

홍익대학교 일반대학원 동양화과 졸업 

홍익대학교 미술대학 동양화과 졸업

개인전

2018 ’Modern Times‘ (갤러리 도스 : 서울)

2018 '논리로 가득찬 캔버스에 검은 시를 띄우다' (갤러리 9P : 서울)

2017 빌딩산수 (아트 테리토리 : 군산)

2017 Duplicate (유중갤러리 : 서울)

2017 Mystic Forms (스트리트 뮤지엄_골목길 : 서울) 

2016 정글몽 (갤러리 다온 : 서울)

2016 Majestic Forms (스칼라티움 아트스페이스 : 서울)

2015 Wonderland (갤러리 구 : 서울)

2015 골목길 (갤러리 드플로허 : 서울)

2015 위대한 껍데기 (이랜드스페이스 : 서울)

2014 MIRAGE (VOID GALLERY : 서울)

2014 이여운 소품전 (B.M.C : 서울)

2013 뉴욕 증후군 (갤러리 시작 : 서울)

2012 오래된 안경 (갤러리 가회동 60 :서울)

2011 Timeless City (교동아트스튜디오 : 전주)

2011 雨中古跡 (갤러리 시작 : 서울)

2009 초대전 잘려진 京 (갤러리 갈라 : 서울)

2007 초대전 유기된 그림자 (롯데화랑 : 안양)

2007 박사학위 청구전 (홍익대학교 현대미술관 : 서울)

2006 기획초대전 검은 윤곽 (창갤러리 : 서울)

2005 기획공모당선전 Illusion (문화일보갤러리 : 서울)

2004 기획 초대전 고(苦) 독(毒) - Bitter Poison (갤러리 라메르 : 서울)

2003 A season in hell (갤러리 라메르 : 서울)

2002 도(道) 시(詩) - Poetry of Road (인사 갤러리 : 서울)

단체전

2018 묵가희소·墨家喜笑 展 (경인미술관 : 서울)

2018 畵畵‘유유산수-서울을 노닐다’ (세종문화회관 미술관 : 서울)

2017 스쾃성수 (S factory : 서울)

2017 건축이 된 예술 2-사이,관계 (스트리트갤러리 : 서울)

2017 서울의 궁 (갤러리 팔레 드 서울 : 서울)

2017 아트부산 (BEXCO : 부산)

2017 아트마이닝 (예술의 전당 : 서울) 

2017 상상 번지점프를 하다 (4log 갤러리 : 서울)

2016 대한민국 아름다운 부채전 (갤러리앨리스 : 광명)

2016 펀펀-백화제방 (아트스페이스H : 서울)

2015 BANYAF (반얀트리호텔 : 서울)

2015 Landmarks-A glorious dream (63 스카이아트갤러리 : 서울)

2015 FUN:fun전 (선화랑 : 서울)

2015 I will∼墨 4인전 (한전아트센타 : 서울)

2015 법고창신 (그림손 갤러리 : 서울)

2015 아트코리아 아트페어 (예술의 전당 : 서울)

2014 Unique & Grotesque (아르떼22 : 서울)

2014 일생전 (갤러리 시작 : 서울)

2014 홍익아트페어 (롯데호텔 : 서울)

그 외 다수

수상경력

2018 베니스 살롱 앙코르 초청 작가 선정 (베니스)

2018 퍼블릭아트 뉴히어로 작가 선정 (서울)

2018 서울문화재단 예술창작 지원사업 시각예술 (서울) 

2017 베니스 살롱 카우치 작가 선정 (베니스)

2016 유중아트센터 작가공모 당선 (서울) 

2015 서울문화재단 예술창작 지원사업 시각예술 (서울)

2014 이랜드 문화재단 작가공모 당선 (서울) 

2007 송은미술대상전 (인사아트센타 : 서울)

2006 송은미술대상전 (인사아트센타 : 서울)

2006 창갤러리 개인전 공모 수상 (서울)

2005 송은미술대상전 (예술의 전당 : 서울)

2005 문화일보미술관 기획 공모 당선 (서울)

2005 파라다이스 작가지원기금 수상 (서울)

2004 동아미술대전 입선 (국립현대미술관 : 과천)

2003 갤러리 라메르 개인전 공모 수상 (서울)

2000 중앙미술대전 특선 (호암아트홀 : 서울)

2000 대한민국미술대전 입선 (국립현대미술관 : 과천) 

2000 동아미술대전 입선 (국립현대미술관 : 과천)

1999 MBC 미술대전 입선(서울시립미술관 : 서울)

1998 대한민국미술대전 입선 (국립현대미술관 : 과천)