From: Weekend

Jung Hyun Doo

2018. 2. 24 ~ 3. 25

Opening Reception: Saturday, Feb. 24, 5-7pm

Forest and Body
Although it is not consciously named, there is a certain ‘state’ that I recognize. My work begins with the question: ‘what is this state?’ My own truth, I find, is that here, I am no longer fully in control; and I realize the work has begun to finish itself. 

When I reach this stage, the initial conscious ‘subject’ of the painting becomes faint, and my body begins to appear in the work. The physical action of paintingis a process through which the ‘subject matter’ of the painting and my body move closer to oneanother. As I work, I hold the image of the forest in my mind, and so the subject matter and I become more intimate still. This process of exchange means it is not only possible to see myself represented metaphorically in the forest as it is painted, but even to look back at myself, to see my body, skin and all, existing in space.

Works often move far from my original intention. These changes though, cannot be dismissed as coincidences—only intentions I didn’t yet know about. As it becomes mixed with these unconscious aims, the ‘real’ forest mutates. The shape of the subject remains in abstraction,by implication, through bodily inertia.

The actions of brush strokes are the breaths that give life to the forest. But they are also traces of a physical stateinduced by repetition, as such,they represent sensation too—my own breaths. The forest and the body grow closer through actions of the hand. Before long, the picture is a person.