what do you want the picture to be

[Pinhole] Jinhyung Lee Solo Exhibition Introduction

​A Lounge Gallery 2021.06.17~07.17

 

what do you want the picture to be

Seonghui Lee

 

Jinhyung Lee has a habit of collecting images produced by various visual media and looking at them repeatedly. Due to his habit of continuously looking at images, Lee Jin-hyeong comes to grasp the meaning, context, and personality of the images when he first collects them. I encountered the moment and found it interesting. Jinhyung Lee expresses this point as somewhere between the objects, or somewhere in the middle between stillness and noise. Using the images placed at these points as the material of his work, the artist partially captures the texture and structural contours of the atmosphere of the images. capture and compose the screen. How far away from the original image is Lee Jin-hyeong's painting born in this way? The artist hopes that her painting will break away from the original context of the image and look like an independent entity, paradoxically capturing the fading point more clearly and trying to accurately position the work there.

 

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The pinhole: the role of the eye

 

In Jinhyung Lee's paintings, the role of the eyes is important. The reason why the artist decided to title this exhibition as 'Pinhole' is that the phenomenon called the pinhole effect resembles the artist's habit and work method at a glance. refers to a phenomenon The artist says that he has a habit of unconsciously squinting his eyes when drawing. As a result, it presents us with a somewhat blurry image rather than a completely clear image, but the degree of clarity or blurring is a certain point the artist has chosen while looking at the canvas with constantly frowning eyes during the work process. Like a pinhole camera, which takes a long time to obtain an image and is difficult to obtain a clear image due to the size of the hole and the fineness of distance control, his paintings move back and forth between the subject and the eye, and the focus is determined at a certain intermediate point. It's like a street. And the unknown but clear focal length of his work determined in this way induces the viewer facing the work to move forward or step back to capture a clearer image. At this time, the information that the eyes grasp leads the movement of the body. In front of the work, the eyes naturally first step through the process of trying to figure out the identity of the image. However, his paintings do not easily give hints, and what the eye discovers is the surface texture and color development of the paint evenly applied on the canvas. This surface conveys a full feeling of desolation without showing the shape. The eyes that sweep down the surface of the canvas, denied the illusion, end up lingering in front of the dark canvas surface that seems to have absorbed not only the paint but also the surrounding sounds.

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A painting that tries to break away from the image

 

Lee Jin-hyung refers to photographs, but has constantly attempted to deviate from the original image.[One]Looking at his works in the mid-to-late 2010s, we can see that he had been referring to photography before, but he was more interested in creating the surface of newly composed images on the canvas rather than faithfully reproducing the original image. What is interesting is that as time goes by, brush strokes and stains of paint disappear from Jinhyung Lee's canvas, and he pursues a smooth surface. There are layers on this surface, but rather than overlapping on top of the canvas screen, layers sinking under the screen are piled up. All traces and gestures have a depth that cannot be measured. For example, the works introduced in the group exhibition 《The Earth's Surface Repeats Uplift and Subsidence》 (Shinhan Gallery Yeoksam, 2018) and his first solo exhibition 《Non-Wonhyang》 (Project Space Sarubia, 2020) were displayed in a short period of 3-4 years. It shows how the way he handled the painting surface has changed over the years. All of these works, titled <Untitled>, clearly show that they have made great efforts not to contain the contents of images other than paintings. The artist chose a part or fragment of an image or an ambiguous situation to make it impossible to explain the image. It made it impossible to know which part of the original image was moved to the canvas and took its place. As it is an image without a specific shape, as a result, the viewer has no choice but to pay more attention to the structure or surface of the screen. In addition, the way in which paintings relate to space is examined. At this moment, the painting itself occupies the space. In particular, the works introduced in <Niwonhyang> are conscious of the walls, floors, and columns as if they were part of the Sarubia space, but seldom convey the artist's emotions or gestures that can be created through brushstrokes. If the paintings at that time can be described as abstract, it would be because they were literally abstract, reducing explanations, reducing emotions, and only opening the surface of the painting towards the space and the air that filled it.

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Events on the surface of the painting

 

In this solo exhibition, there are works that the artist hinted at or worked with individual titles in mind instead of the title 'Untitled'. This is slightly different from the existing attitude of not providing a priori information to images. For example, <Untitled (Closer)>, a series of five works in No. 10, has the subtitle 'closer'. The artist said that this word expresses the emotions she felt through brushstrokes and touches during work. Since the senses felt by brush strokes and touch belong only to the artist, for the viewer who cannot touch the painting, there is no other way to infer the senses and emotions through them other than getting closer to the painting. So, when we approach these paintings and close our eyes, we experience that the images gradually appear as material. The image, which looks like haze or shimmering light when seen from behind, is actually a surface on which paint particles are evenly applied, and whitish particles are irregularly distributed amidst subtle colors spreading indistinguishable from boundaries. Thin lines drawn as if one or two brushed through are also passed under the layer where the paint particles are applied. Therefore, the fine particles of paint exist on the top layer of the canvas, and the image subsides below them. The nuance of color created by these surface particles subtly changes depending on the angle of lighting and gaze. Blue seems to seep out from under gray, and red seems to seep out from under black. Jinhyung Lee uses a mixture of pigment and oil when using oil paint, but he also filters out the oil to adjust the degree of light reflection on the surface of the paint. In particular, <Untitled (Resonance)>, which is hanging on the central wall of the exhibition hall in this lounge, was painted mainly with pigments left after filtering out a considerable amount of linseed oil from black paint. It is not to the extent of challenging 0% light reflectance like Vanta Black, but his black color reduces light reflection and gives a feeling of color seeping up from under the surface of the canvas. As if looking at the surface of the speaker grill cloth, it seems to absorb even the surrounding sounds. The artist told the author that he thought of the subtitle as 'resonance', that is, 'resonance', because he felt that the colors painted under this black color made their own sound. However, I feel that the sound of the resonance does not resonate grandly outside the screen, but is adsorbed to the black color and permeates under the canvas. While subtly holding the nuance of each color.

Previously, I used the expression 'clear or blurry' when explaining Lee Jin-hyung's paintings. However, this is an expression based on the premise of the original image, and if Lee Jin-hyung's painting is completely removed from the original image and viewed only as the painting itself, it is correct to say that there is no reason to hear the expression that his painting is blurry compared to the object of representation. Rather, the important event that occurs on the surface of his painting is the nuance created by the adsorption of colors and their resonance. Often, we think of color only as a result of light. However, Goethe explained the principle of color and said that light and darkness, that is, light and non-light, are required for color to be created. He also said that color can be regarded as half-glow and half-shadow.[2]Above all, Goethe refused to see color as an objective entity like Newton's optics, and instead emphasized that it is a phenomenon related to the observer, that is, our eyes.

 

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what do you want the picture to be

 

The question of what to paint is fateful for artists.  However, at some point, Jinhyung Lee focuses more on how to paint than on what to paint. At this time, his eyes play an important role. In the first place, the reason why he had the habit of constantly collecting images and looking at them repeatedly for a long time may be because he was worried about what to paint, but his eyes seem to have experienced Goethe's words as follows.

 

“The eye cannot and does not intend to remain, even for a moment, in a particular state defined by an object. Rather, the eyes are forced into a kind of confrontation. Such an opposition, so to speak, opposes extreme to extreme, mediocre to mediocre, immediately unites the opposites, and at the same time directs the whole in its place.”[3]

 

Jinhyung Lee's painting started from an already existing image, but he does not even try to resemble the original image. A spectator who squints in front of his work may feel like grasping an existence that seems to be beyond the fog, but his paintings do not hide the image. He did not deny the property of image, which occupies half of the identity of painting. However, Lee Jin-hyung's painting intends to exist clearly. Desiring not to be subordinated to images, he wants to become an independent entity. Richter once commented on his photo-painting work in the 1960s and 1970s, which was well known for his blur technique.

 

“My own relation to reality is described as obscure, insecure, fearful, and fragmentary. But that doesn't explain my drawings. At best, that only explains why I paint. Pictures are a bit different. For example, my paintings are never made blurry. What we see as blurry is imprecise. And this means that it is different from the reproduced object. But since a picture is not drawn to be compared with reality, it cannot be blurry, imprecise, or anything else. For example, how can the colors on the canvas be faded?”[4]

 

When WJT Mitchell asked the question “What does the painting want?”, Mitchell said that the expression 'want' could paradoxically mean 'lack'.[5]If we apply this question to Jinhyung Lee's paintings, we can say that his paintings want to show the view. We do visual arts, but we are not faithful to what we see. The more images overflow, the more insincere the vision becomes. Jinhyung Lee's painting is located between us who lack this 'seeing' and the image.

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[One]The fact that he pursues painting that deviates from the original image while referring to photography reminds us of <Ausschnitt>, a series of photo paintings by Gerhard Richter.

[2]Goethe, 『Color Theory』, translated by Chang Hee-chang, Seoul: Minumsa, 2016, p.43.

[3]Goethe, supra, p.56.

[4]A Conversation between Richter and Rolf Schön (1972). Requoted from the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, 『Gerhard Richter, Master of German Contemporary Art』 (Seoul: Culture Books, 2003), p.28.

[5]WJT Mitchell, 『What does painting want』, translated by Jeon Yoo-kyung Kim, Seoul: Green Bee, 2016, p.68.

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