Exhibition Text : 《The road that I walked yesterday》
JEON Seungyong Senior Curator, Hanwon Musem of Art
From October 6 (Thu) to December 16 (Fri), 2022, the Hanwon Museum of Art presents JIN Minwook’s solo exhibition, The road that I walked yesterday. The exhibition focuses on the rediscovery of mid-career artists, who are the main pillars of the Korean art scene. After years of creative endeavors, each of them is immersed in their own work, both in content and form, perfecting their artistic skills for years to come as artists. Therefore, the Hanwon Museum of Art keeps a close eye on the progress of artists who are reflecting on the medium and experimenting in various genres, presenting exhibitions to examine their artistic evolution over time with a focus on their new works. As such, we hope to contribute to broadening the spectrum of the Korean art world through this exhibition. Moreover, we hope to serve as a foundation for the artists to leap from one stage of their career to the next by organizing and supporting exhibitions for up-and-coming mid-career artists. The purpose of this exhibition is also in line with the goal pursued by the Hanwon Museum of Art.
For the current exhibition, the museum selected JIN Minwook, an artist who pursues the modernity of oriental painting within the category of contemporary art and inherits the tradition of traditional polychrome painting. In 2019, the artist participated in the 10th Painter Program Sketchbook, Landscape in mind at the Hanwon Museum of Art, where she presented a composition that schematically divided the boundaries of the object and background according to the moving point of view in traditional painting. The transparency and simplicity of JIN Minwook’s colors and the richness of her compositions give her work a sense of sincerity, which results from her hard work, persistence, and years of skillful expression. The elements that often appear in JIN’s work are also objects of intense and delicate observation, depiction, and projection, which convey her touch, thoughts, and daily emotions. As the exhibition title suggests, the artist creates paintings based on the impressions she felt from the cities she has stayed in and the surrounding landscapes adjacent to her mundane daily life and living experiences. The artist is fascinated by the beauty of tiny beings in ordinary materials such as flowers, insects, animals, and rocks, and experiments with painting to capture them as mental “representations.”
We feel a new and unfamiliar perspective in a landscape that we pass by chance. JIN Minwook strolls throughher tranquil daily life and tries to connect with nature in order to find a connection between himself and the world. French philosopher Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) defined man as “Homo Viator” which means “traveling man.” According to him, humans take on the characteristics of travelers as they move through the world. Man isa traveler in his own right, a sojourner who stays in the world for a while and then leaves.1) In other words, life isa journey. The inspiration for JIN Minwook’s “stroll” came from a personal experience. Since walking is a slow, simple act of movement, it allows a person to think and focus on himself in the process. Walking is an organic and complex behavior that involves two elements: the spirit and the body. Through his photographs and sketches of the landscapes along the road and the objects he encounters along the way, JIN’s work may serve to reveal a sense of identity or personal connection to the places that are woven into our lives through strolling. Perhaps strolling is a beneficial act for free-flowing mental activity. The things we feel and think while strolling are moments of serendipity and inevitability. Furthermore, we can recognize the subtle differences between places as we move through them because strolling is a journey through time and narrative. In this context, JIN Minwook becomes a flâneur, a person who looks at objects with an intuitive eye and a contemplative attitude, reflecting on the new landscapes that unfold in her mind.2)
In recent years, she has been creating a series of landscape paintings based on the places she has stayed, especially the deep impressions he feels from the everyday objects around her. The artist borrows the meaning of “常春(sang-chun),” a literary expression used in ancient texts to describe the wonder of nature, to create a narrative.3) In addition, the artist projects oriental worldviews such as “理想鄕 (ideal land)” and “桃源境 (paradise),” which are commonly encountered in traditional paintings, onto a still composition. Through this, the subjective places that she strolls in the city are transformed into a real-life paradise with her imagination.
We are psychologically stirred when we have a momentary discovery, an epiphany, or a mixed emotion in the landscape. JIN Minwook focuses on the moment when the emotions and sensations she felt in the landscape are transferred to the canvas after a certain interval. In the process of working, the artist gazes at and collects the results of researching photographs, field drawings, and materials of the observed area, as well as the momentary emotions that come from interacting with the object. She then organizes the sketch of the painting based on the organized memories. The images, placed freely across the screen, are linked to scenes that are embodied in the artist’s memory, evoking a new sense of place. The titles of her works, which have no inferred meaning, also read the landscape in the painting not as a mere narrative record, but as a landscape of time—experienced in life and relived in memory. Nevertheless, the universal and familiar subjects she chooses easily evoke landscapes from the viewer’s own memories. The artist repeatedly applies the fine stone powder pigments, creating a serene atmosphere as the colors seep through the silk.
Walking is a mix of “stroll” and “pause.” Through encounters with various objects, relationships are formed and developed. The artist listens to her inner voice, healing herself and celebrating moments of reflection. The current exhibition is a continuation of her works from last year, Stroll & See (2021) and Little Seclusion (2021). The artist sees things around her with new eyes and finds emotional connections. The Stroll & See series presents a more mature and developed way of thinking in terms of formality than her previous series where she focused on the trivial values she gradually discovered in life through interaction with “small natural landscapes.”In Stroll & See, the viewer moves from place to place, experiencing sensation and thought in the process. The various figures, which are a combination of elements of memory, sensation, and physical movement, are reconstructed according to the artist’s subjective approach by emphasizing or omitting parts as if she exercises a collage technique. In other words, they become an imaginary space—a place of rest—that hovers between the real and the illusory.
In addition, Little Seclusion, her new series from 2021, draws on images from the personal landscapes she has collected and poetic expressions from classical literature. The works in this series are transformed canvas works that reinterpret the form of traditional painting from a contemporary perspective, keeping in mind the mountain views from the city center and the outlines of natural objects collected by the artist.4) The new work in the current exhibition is an installation with a vertical shape that reinterprets the structural shape of the folding screen. It is the artist’s way of signaling to the viewer to move, share, and appreciate the trajectory of sight, touch, and thought through multiple layers.
The meaning of a place is not tied to a specific person. The act of walking together can be a way of sharing the meaning of a particular place, and it can be a symbol of creating new meaning. In this way, JIN Minwook pays attention to the contemporary landscape and adopts the stance of a “flâneur” who observes and records our daily lives and the movements around them. However, her work is not limited to representational impressions. She reflects her mental image and intimate psychology in the landscape through color. In her attempt to establish an organic relationship with the viewer, JIN Minwook invites us to reflect on our own lives with a slow step, on what we see and what we think as we walk in the city of our time. I propose that we walk from work to work in this exhibition, in a space filled with poetic landscapes, and appreciate them at our own rhythm. I would like to suggest that we take a moment to retrace the steps we took yesterday and savor the intensity and depth of the day.
(1) HONG Seungsik, Gabriel Marcel’s Philosophy of Hope [가브리엘 마르셀의 희망의 철학] (Seoul: Catholic Book, 2002), p.11.
(2) Flâneur is a French word meaning“a leisurely wanderer.” French poet Charles Baudelaire named flâneursas observers of the modernization that took place in Paris in the mid- 19th century. In his 1863 article“The Painter of Modern Life” in Le Figaro, he described the flâneur as “someone who walks through a city to experience it.” Flâneur was later interpreted by German philosopher Walter Benjamin as an “observer” and “explorer” of the city, and developed into a major social science conceptas a signifier of consumerism and alienation in modern cities. In other words, flâneurs enjoy a leisurely, slow stroll, reacting to moments scattered throughout. They look forward to discovering the extraordinary in the ordinary and the new in the common, and they seek new life experiences that are different from the everyday.
(3) JIN Minwook’s “常春 (sang-chun)” does not primarily imply the meaning of “spring” among the four seasons. Rather, it is more of a psychological and emotional expression.
(4) The title of the work, Little Seclusion, is borrowed from “The Hermit in Between (中隱)” by the Tang Dynasty poet Bai Juyi (白居易). In the poem, there is a verse that describes a life of “hermitage,” a life of seclusion from the world by leaving government service and entering nature—rivers and forests.