▲ ‘석가 십대제자’연작, 140×500㎝, Woodcut, 2001

 

Wishing to reflect on myself and add richness to my life through work, I seek plurality through new print idioms. (Artist statement)

 

For Jo Hyang-sook, a print is a book, the mind, and a vessel containing the soul, which she unfolds through a diversity of technique and experimentation with two-dimensional structures, and temporal, spatial expressions. In woodcut prints emphasizing strength and sentience, Jo has constructed a distinctive style through new techniques. Her work content associates with the involuntary memory (memoire involontaire), to which Marcel Proust alluded, involving private moments and keywords for work interpretation. With a strong attachment to woodcut prints, she discovers traces of lost time through physical labor of carving plates.

Jo’s printmaking underscores theme, meaning, and expressivity rather than realistic renditions through physical labor leaving traces of her hands in wood plates. The tactility and expression comes before narrative or content, underlining the physicality of the plates and sensuous effect. A coexistence of Buddha and topless female images can be read through her work as a manifestation of nirvana and lust. For Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a confrontation of unrealistic images is reminiscent of an essential ‘one’s own body’ (le corps propre).

The subject of Jo’s prints is religious and individual. Unexpected objects such as Buddhist pagodas and images, ideal landscapes and blue-green landscapes, topless female women and horses, flowers and parrots are presented through the technique of depaysement. Her recent work eloquently presents modern features of printmaking with many images and mixed techniques of woodcut and silkscreen. In previous work Jo emphasized Seon thoughts (Zen thoughts), addressing the theme Simwudo (ten ox-herding paintings), and in recent pieces she experimented with the coexistence of dual meaning through a distortion of the soul and realism. A thousand pagodas and Buddha images, snakes and flowers, topless women and splendid patterns appear in an arena of mixed space and time.

 

▲ 천인, 60×90㎝, Woodcut, 2008

 

Escaping the conventional expression of Simwudo, the artist concentrates now on the matter of space-time through prints with a divided structure. Jo presents an encounter of unfamiliar images and objects; complex images transcending space-time. Alongside involuntary memories the modeling quality of space-time her recent work underlines is a significant object of analysis.

Her work’s dualistic presentation of space relates to involuntary memories; the flow of consciousness. The duality is maximized when another image is inserted. While Buddha images, parrots, cages, flowers, and snakes appear in one scene, simple black-and-white landscapes appear in another. Such dualism and confrontation presents mutual independence rather than association. Through the dual structures of images she allows realistic and unrealistic incidents to coexist on the same plane, enabling religious, philosophical interpretation.

Such structures show the confrontation and unity of things. Each scene’s structure and composition is rendered, dependant on the size of images, showing visual expression in width and depth. Each space is a departure point for her thinking through confrontation and unity. The artist presents a representation of metaphysics through coexistence of real and imaginary worlds, a mixture of woodcut print and silkscreen techniques, and bisected structures. The dual structure and change in space enable us to think about the unthinkable, and make the invisible visible.

△글=유재길(홍익대교수. 미술평론)/Yoo Jae-kil(Hongik University Professor & Art Critic)

 

◇화가 조향숙(趙香淑)

조향숙 작가는 홍익대학교 대학원 박사과정 미술학과 판화전공 졸업(미술박사) 및 홍익대학교 일반대학원 판화과 졸업(석사)했다 △개인전=2017 유나이티드 갤러리 외 13회.

 

키워드

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