The series of Cluster paintings offer a curiosity to the extent that there are two stylistic orientations. The most dominant is what might be called the “hard edge” variations on a theme where the trunks of trees are angular and in the foreground of the composition. But eventually the curvaceous trucks of the earlier Birch Forest paintings from 2011-13 give way to the geometry used in the later Cluster variations.

By the end of 2014, one may discover a glimmer of light in Ryu’s gestural white paintings, also included in the Cluster series, which suggest a transmutation of the angular tree trunk into forms resembling the female body. In that the artist was involved in doing life drawings of female nudes as early as 2008, some of which became acrylic paintings, the transmutation of these trees into abstract female nudes implies the origin of a creative idea. By late 2014, the oil paintings began looking more like female bodies than birch tree trunks. The notion of expression through sexualized form may suggest the return of the body to its natural origins, which are inextricably bound to nature.

Young shin Ryu is a superb colorist. This is made evident throughout both series of paintings: her representational Birch Forest series and her titillating abstract Cluster series. Whereas the representational paintings retain a feeling for Impressionism, the Cluster series veer toward Pop Art.

In each case, the color functions differently in relation to form. The color in the Birch Forest series is more modulated with chromatic gradations passing easily from one hue into another. In the Cluster series, the trunk/body shapes are set off against the background as the background is, in effect, pushing forward and equal to the same pictorial status of the angular tree trunks. In this way, the Cluster series resemble the pro to-Pop compositions used by the American painter Stuart Davis. The artist’s use of clearly divided shapes of color in her Cluster series is made apparent in a two-panel work from 2013. Here we see five purple trunks speckled in white rising up from a yellow ground over a turquoise streaked red sky. Each shape reveals its own identity as in another Cluster painting where a positive-negative reversal in brilliantly represented in which silhouettes of the sky and the trees replace one another in a Gestalt interaction.

Whereas the negative space is painted in light blue, the positive is painted with dark blue interwoven with fluid orange stripes. Off to the far upper left is s subtle bright red and yellow suggesting a rising or setting winter sun. In either painting, the affect of the color is possibly more related to color in the urban environment, as in Der Blaue Reiter, while suggesting emotional content felt in relation to the forest and the often wild seasonal colors at various times of the year.

With Ryu Young Shin, it takes more than a single glance to absorb the complexity of her paintings. Even in the earlier flower paintings from 2005–2010, the structure of her compositions tends to vacillate between geometric abstraction and organic realism, which suggest both formal precision and emotional content. Ryu is a prolific painter as her pictorial compositions are open to a myriad of possible variations and permutations. It appears that the recent evolution toward trees as bodies and bodies as trees creates a curious and engaging ambiguity. Indeed, in the most convincing romantic painting–and here I think of Delacroix–the artist knows how to construct ambiguity in which one thing could be another, and that could be something else. This manner of painting leans most assuredly toward a Modernist aesthetic, which in the work of Young shin Ryu appears to have found a resonance.

◇Robert C. Morgan

Scholar, poet, artist, curator, and critic, Robert C. Morgan writes frequently on the art of contemporary Chinese and Korean artists. He is the New York Editor of Asian Art News and teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York. In 2005, Dr. Morgan was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in the Republic of Korea.

◇서양화가 류영신(柳栐愼, ARTIST RYU YOUNG SHIN)

충남천안출신화가로 개인전 31회 및 국내외 아트페어 33회에 출품하였다. 학자이자 시인, 예술가, 큐레이터, 비평가인 로버트.C.모건(Robert C. Morgan)은 류영신 작가의 ‘클러스터’ 연작에 대해 “각각의 형태는 정체성을 잘 드러내고 있는데, 여기서는 음과 양의 전환이 하늘과 나무의 실루엣이 게슈탈트적인 상호 작용으로 표현되고 있다. 음의 영역이 맑은 파란색으로 칠해진 반면, 양의 영역은 흐르는 듯 한 주황색과 엮인 짙은 남색으로 칠해져 있다”라고 평했다.