Harmony of Nature Without Providence
Art in Culture, November 2011 / Focus

Kyong Lee, September 28–October 17, Gallery Art Space
Park Ki-jin, September 28–October 24, Space Gallery

Kyong Lee’s paintings and Park Ki-jin’s installation works are the results of deep inquiry into nature rather than art historical context. For them, nature is an eternal repository of art and a source for renewing not only the content but also the form of their works. Although the external appearance of their works seems very simple, they commonly contain complexly folded curved surfaces and sophisticated mechanisms inside. The color fields or mechanical cross-sections faced form an endless chain network and pass through. In Kyong Lee’s solo exhibition, there are thin layers of paint that distinguish between surfaces and surfaces, colors and colors, forms and forms, finely accumulated at the edges of removed tape. And in Park Ki-jin’s exhibition, there are machines operated by combining pipes of various sizes. These two exhibitions focus on ‘discontinuity’ as a condition of continuity. The relationship between continuity and discontinuity, and furthermore between necessity and chance, has been a long-standing topic not only in art but also starting from ancient natural philosophy.

The Horizontal of Possible Colors Jean Salem points out in [Ancient Atomism] that ancient atomists could understand empirical appearances, above all movement, by announcing that existence is essentially ‘discontinuous.’ On the other hand, opponents taught that ‘the whole is one and eternal and unshaken and complete’ (Parmenides). Opponents see movement as merely illusion. Jean Salem contrasts materialism, which asserts discontinuity and contingency, with idealism, which asserts continuity and necessity through providence. According to his classification, the hypothesis of ancient atomists, which modern science also shares, is materialist. For them, the movement of atoms is not the result of any external coercive force that determines it, that is, necessity. The atomists’ concept of necessity does not assume origin and final purpose like idealism. The generation and destruction occurring in the universe have always been and will be eternal. The sky or water from which Kyong Lee and Park Ki-jin depart also has uncertain points where it begins and ends. However, the effort to continue the discontinuous flow continues, whether in nature or art.

Painter Kyong Lee suggests a series of landscapes through bands of color unfolding in various series. What makes one recall landscape in non-representational screens is the ‘horizontal plane’ that evokes the horizon or skyline. The colors filling the horizontal plane drawn using tape of various thicknesses also evoke the canvas of vast nature that constantly changes, like the sky or sea. In the work titles, the words ‘landscape’ and ‘picture’ appear together. As the artist says, ‘paintings contain reality, but are expressed in non-existent space, color, and depth.’ It creates ‘the horizontal of possible colors’ (exhibition subtitle).

What simultaneously mediates landscape and picture is language. However, that language composed of subtle color series is ‘language outside language.’ Space accumulates along the flow of time, and time is spatialized like stratified layers. The color painted first calls the next color, and form is not predetermined but results from the transition of color. In previous works, horizontal color bands that gradually accumulated were predominant, but in this exhibition, variations of ever-changing forms become dominant. Among works painted with acrylic paint on canvas, only the (mistylandscape_) series consists of horizontal color bands, while in the (picture_) series, transitions of color and form occur even within layers forming a single unit. Small works freely drawn with lines without using tape are also hung. Previous works were soft and calm, but this work embraces confrontation and collision, placing emphasis on dynamism rather than natural harmony. Stable structures fluctuate with ripples due to some event occurring in nature.

Machines Forming Horizontals Park Ki-jin’s exhibition also deals with fluid elements of nature like water. If in Kyong Lee’s case the rule of horizontal color fields is implemented, Park Ki-jin concretizes his imagination into sophisticated devices. Fiction stands proudly in three-dimensional space as if it had been there all along. Fiction as light as a feather is realized as a heavy object, occupying a place on earth. In this context, the strange machines in the exhibition space are not inventions but ‘discoveries’ (exhibition subtitle). While talking to a friend on the other side of the Atlantic, the artist became aware that the two are connected by water, and through a series of circulation devices, embodies the ancient natural philosophy that all things are connected. The great lake symbolizes water separated from this network, and the artist continues the idea of connecting two lakes in Africa.

The huge water pit visible immediately upon entering the exhibition entrance corresponds to the cross-section of the connecting pipe of the two lakes. The image of rippling water filling a huge tunnel immerses viewers as if to suck them in. When viewed from the basement level, only old metal pipes are visible. Rather than being an artwork viewed as a whole, it emphasizes the aspect of objects installed and operating in actual space. Different shaped fish inhabit the two separated lakes; they were originally one species but evolved and differentiated separately. The artist wanted to bring them together and created a structure like a huge buoy in another exhibition room that would make this possible. If this device were actually floated on the lake, fish could rise to the top of the machine where bubbles emerge, look around, and meet their kin. Bubbling foam, flashing light, and intermittent sounds suggest that the machine is not just standing but operating.

Information enabling their realization is inscribed like a manual on the exhibition walls, and the flow of water escaping between tunnels is expressed by horizontally arranging eight panels. In Park Ki-jin’s work, as in Kyong Lee’s, leveling horizontally is important. This is because small differences and gaps above and below the baseline of the horizontal will make all things flow. Without such standards, flow would remain in primordial chaos. From the modern perspective dominated by communication devices made only of sleek surfaces, this machine looks like an ancient relic. It is positioned at the apex of analog form where function can be inferred from form. This machine, which appears both fantastical and even absurd, is a medium that will take us to utopia or dystopia.

Rearrangement of Nature In the works of Kyong Lee and Park Ki-jin, the laws of nature are rearranged according to rules set by the artists. Nature is not only a source of common sense but also of heterogeneity. Their works are cases where things that did not exist before come into being, but they do not remain in arbitrariness that mostly ends up being nothing. On the contrary, they are filled with tense structures. Through these structures, events finally occur. Or are activated. As structuralist anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss says in [Tristes Tropiques], there is nothing arbitrary in the relationship between nature, society, and culture. Art is not simply the product of irrational and illogical impulses, but rather, as primitives do, logically and systematically organizing what the natural environment provides.

Their very restrained and strict-looking paintings and installations, unlike science that pursues codes, form a semantic system that reorganizes experienced data while dividing given things by series and not overlooking discontinuous elements. In that respect, they engage in ‘savage thought’ (Lévi-Strauss). Fluid and unstable elements like water or atmosphere unfold orderly in a spectrum different from nature through the play of structures with implicit diversity. Their works that embody nature as reference are structural, but their method is not ideational. For the movement of particles forming water and atmosphere to be demarcated and flow in this or that way, the relationship between continuity and discontinuity is important. Whether in nature or art, division into rational units is a prerequisite for continuity.

This can be traced back to ancient atomists. Jean Salem quotes ancient natural philosopher Lucretius in [Ancient Atomism]. Describing the ceaseless agitation of material elements, he says that in the profound void, no rest is permitted to the first bodies. Atoms like dust illuminated by sunlight make free movements that escape the destiny of mechanical continuity. Lucretius sees the universe as infinite as a whole, and the subsets of matter and vast void are also infinite. Within this infinite universe, thanks to all kinds of combinations and arrangements, atoms create precisely this world.

Like nature, artists align atoms each in their own place without determined plans or providence. No transcendental providence needs to be presupposed for freedom and harmony. Pleasure (‘쾌’) without presupposed providence is precisely what is artistic. Jean Salem points out that ancient atomism, conceptualized somewhat mechanically, naturally led to liberal thought and philosophy of pleasure. According to hedonists including Epicurus, in this universe composed of imperceptible particles, atomists can reach intense, sustainable, and perfect happiness even in finite earthly life. Pleasure is not licentiousness but something more tranquil, more stable, and more radiant. Epicurus did not place a restrained life on the opposite side of pleasure, but simply said pleasure is well-understood life energy. Pleasure is what we are born with, a disposition common to all. What Kyong Lee and Park Ki-jin’s works draw from nature is this universality.

2011 © Lee Sunyoung