In spite of being the core themes of painting and absolutely the strongest, portrait has waned or been neglected with the advent of abstract art and the development of modern art. Of course, photograph also contributed in pushing portraits away from the roles they were originally playing. In line with Clement Greenberg’s statement of “portraits can not be modern,” modernism, desiring both a spiritual and visual cutoff from tradition, could have only scorned portraits which have a glorious history. However, painters like Andy Warhol or Chuck Close have clearly demonstrated that portrait is indeed the everlasting theme of paintings.
Portraits remembered in the Korean art are exceptional works outside the mainstream, which is why an artist who has made a strong artistic statement with portraits is difficult to find. Although a compulsory course for artists, self-portrait is considered to be a part of artistic formation and not a genre to pursue a career. Not only self-portraits but also portraits as an icon have not anchored its place. Against this backdrop, portrait and creation of a character interest emerging artists. Some take their own images as the only theme of their works while others work on faces of social and cultural icons. <I, You & Us>, first exhibition of Johyun Gallery’s New Faces series, try to discover new attitudes in painting and portrait through four artist’s works.
The painting of Yoo Junghyun is very delicate place where overlap images of skin, clothes and shadow, and where existence is perceived in a sensitive way on the borderline between the existing and the non-existing. Each of the figures she created – which can be Adam and Eve banished from Paradise or just plainly two people, a woman, a baby, faces without age – has a particular expression but could be just about anyone. The face and body, drawn ever so lightly like a shadow or a peeled-off skin, convey the discomfort of existence as it is. The bodies striving to escape from the weight of existence are either flushed or burnt. Some even have fever rashes. The artist repeatedly paints and erases her figures and makes an original texture, which connote the act of rubbing, washing and healing of the skin, and also tattoo decorations to ultimately give the viewer a special tactile sensation. The artist does not call her images as “something” but refers to them as “something possible” and also “a representation of the will to maintain balance” between the visible and the invisible. Each piece of work is a journey and a trail, rather than a statement. “When Eskimos are furious, they keep walking and walking in the snow until at one point they don’t feel enraged anymore. Then they mark the spot with their walking stick, leave it there and come back. Like the way Eskimos calm down, painting for me is a journey where the deepest part of my heart – at times emptied and filled up again – aches,” says the artist. She is painting “you” that she has in mind, but actually her work is an existential portrait of all of “us” including the artist herself. For Yoo Junghyun, each canvas is a kind of search, using the virtue of painting, for the balance in the shifting boundary between the revealed and the concealed.
Lee Sun-Kyung has been working only on self-portraits since 2004, not because herself is the most convenient model but because she has been interested in drawing human beings since childhood. People can be so beautiful yet also ugly and fathomless; that is exactly what has fascinated her to portrait them. Her early paintings represent scenes telling the story of difficult human relationships. At first, Lee focused on the relationships with others which can either be a salvation or a threat, then shifted to deal with the difficult relationships within the family, and later focused on confrontation with herself. In the self-portraits entitled “Immaculate Virgin” (2000), the artist has represented already herself with admiration, doubt and cynicism. The mixture of narcissism, self-hatred, the fear of schizophrenia is translated into the multiplication of head and face. Sometimes a head would show several faces, at other times a strange head would pop out from any random part of the body, or the whole canvas would be covered with uncountable faces. More recently she is depicting illusions hidden in the sub-consciousness by featuring them in a more surreal way. In the painting named “Gaze,” the big eyes that once had a piercing glare are drawn as if they are leaving the face to venture out into the world. The powerful strokes on the big size paper convey the desire of the artist to have integrity as a person, with provocative and sometimes subversive humor. The self-portraits of Lee Sun-Kyung show a process of finding the several personas hidden in “me,” having conflicts and then reconciling with each other. For her, like for many other female artists of the day, art is a mirror for self-reflection, which ushers her into self-healing.
Self-portraits are also what Lee So-Yeon only focuses on. Her own image, always featured in the center of the canvas, shows strange yet beautiful mask produced by exaggerating her own features, such as the peaked, slit eyes with animal-like sparkles, round forehead and sharp chin. The poses are sometimes confident, awkward or funny and the eyes are looking straight ahead; the clothes, accessories and the background harmonize to produce an uncanny scene. “The clothes, accessories and the little props shown in the paintings are important elements that complete my work. I collected them by simple curiosity and I cherish them. They tell me what I was thinking and feeling, and even at what point of time I was in.” “I utilize the clothes, accessories and the props as decorations for my body or as part of the scene in the canvas, and then I work to make them a part of me and at the same time for them to become the language of the painting. These are my memories and experiences, and also motifs of the painting which combine with other elements – such as the pose or the space – and ultimately become part of the strange psychological and sentimental world that cannot be clearly defined.” Her stay in Germany seems to have provided opportunities to reflect on identity, difference, the familiar and the strange as well as on their flexible boundaries. There, masks exotic to both Europeans and Koreans, and the clothes and gadgets from the global culture have been recreated as icons with multiple meanings. The powerful aura of Lee So-Yeon’s paintings stems from the solid form and composition, fantastic expression of texture, particular coloring technique and also from this strange familiarity. The artist comes in as a characterized “me” to remind us of our memories and flavor of the era while simultaneously recording her life.
Yim Ja-hyuk calls herself “the fisher of images.” For her, hand drawing is a natural and mandatory act like breathing, through which her visual experiences and memories find issue to be materialized. But like any skilled fisher, she knows the stage of patience, training and having an eye. Her drawings remind us the process of visual experiences being remembered as images, which are in turn associated with other images to create a story. These light and fluid images – much like imagination itself – are associated with words to inspire numerous open ended stories in the minds of the spectators. As such, the different arrangement and array of Yim’s individual images creates a whole new meaning, much like the way the same words can make different sentences depending on the combinations and sequence. Her small drawings are projected on walls to become a space work, where the viewers are literally placed within the drawn image. In fact, wall drawing is a genre where the artist’s talent to interpret space and her fresh imagination are given full play. Swimmers, turtle or whale shaped with masking tape, which triggers images of uniform lines drawn simply by felt-tipped pen, transform the whole wall into an aquatic world, and their enormous size, floating weightless, makes all others seem so trivial. For the exhibition at Johyun Gallery, the artist chose to portrait “Long-tailed Lemur.” The monkey couple holding hands which seem to be looking at the exhibition with astonishment may be an allegorical image of “us” but the interpretation is left entirely to the beholder.
A grandeur that overthrows the usual sense of space, but driven in a light way; a fierce troubles with oneself but one with the composure to be jolly; a dialogue on the weight of existence expressed ever so lightly as a shadow; and the brightness to portrait oneself and our time simultaneously : Such are the “lightness” that the four artists of the same generation grown up in the abundant visual images have in common. And this may be the expression of mental freedom and a marvelous “lightness” nurtured by passion.
인물과 초상은 회화의 근원에 있는 주제이자 회화의 가장 강력한 주제였음에도 불구하고 추상미술의 등장과 현대미술의 전개 속에서 위축되거나 등한시 되었다. 사진의 발명 이후 과거 초상화가 수행하던 역활의 상당 부분을 사진이 대행하게 된 상황도 있거니와 모더니즘의 이론가 클레멘트 그린버그가 “초상은 모던이 될 수 없다”고 단언했을 정도로 전통과의 정신적, 시각적 단절을 원한 모더니즘은 화려한 역사를 가진 초상화 장르를 배척할 수 밖에 없었을 것이다. 하지만 앤디 워홀, 척 클로스와 같은 작가들이 보여준 현대의 초상은 얼굴이 영원한 회화의 장임을 반증해 보였다.
한국미술에서 기억되는 인물화는 주류에서 벗어난 예외적인 작품들로서, 인물을 통하여 강력한 예술적 발언을 한 작가는 찾기 어렵다. 화가 수업에서 자화상은 필수적인 과정이지만 누구도 머무르지 않는 하나의 과정일 뿐이었다. 또한 작가 자신의 얼굴 뿐 아니라 정치적, 문화적 아이콘으로서의 인물화가 자리를 잡지 못해 온 것이 현실이다.
반면 최근 등장한 일군의 젊은 작가들에게서 인물은 중요한 주제로 부각되고 있다. 자신의 얼굴을 작업의 유일한 주제로 삼는 작가들이 있는가 하면, 사회적, 문화적 아이콘으로서의 얼굴들이 다양하게 작업되고 있다. 이런 맥락을 염두에 두고 인물화 작업을 하고 그것을 통하여 신선한 제안을 하는 네 작가를 소개한다.
유정현은 1973년, 서울 출생으로 홍익대학교 판화과와 독일 뮌헨 국립 조형예술대학 회화과를 졸업하고 독일에서 작가 생활을 시작했으며 현재 서울과 베를린을 오가며 활동한다. 판화적 효과를 연상시키는 독창적인 질감의 표면은 그가 그려내는 인물에 촉각적, 감각 이입적 차원을 부여한다. 유정현은 화폭이 하나의 존재가 되게 하기 위해 인물을 그린다, 마치 그림자처럼, 박피된 피부처럼 얇게 그려진 얼굴과 신체는 존재의 불편함을 그대로 전달한다. 그녀는 ‘너’를 그리고 있지만 사실 ‘나’와 ‘우리’의 존재적 초상임을 발견하게 된다. 나와 세계의 경계를 만드는 피부를 그리고 지우고 문지르고 장식하며 다듬는 그의 작업 과정은 독창적인 회화성을 만들어 냈다. 이러한 점이 작가 유정현이 독일 화단에서 주목 받는 신인이 된 계기가 되었다.
이선경은 1975년 서울 생으로 신라대학 회화과를 졸업하고 부산에서 작가활동을 하고 있는 지역 유망주이다. 2004년경부터 자화상만을 그려온 작가는 자기 도취와 자기 혐오를 뒤섞어 자신 안의 수많은 타자들을 화면에 펼쳐 낸다. 최근에는 보다 초현실주의적인 연출을 통해 잠재의식 깊숙이 숨어있는 환상을 그려내고 있다. 대형 화면에 소묘 형태로 포착된 그의 자화상들은 활달한 필력 속에 한 인간으로서 일관성을 가지고자 하는 열망을 읽을 수 있다. 이선경의 자화상 작업은 ‘나’ 속에 숨어있는 수많은 ‘너’를 찾아내고 그와 갈등, 화해하는 과정으로, 이 시대 많은 여성 작가들의 경우처럼 자신을 바라보고 점검하면서 스스로 치유하고 새로운 세계를 열어 보이는 상상력의 힘을 가지고 있다.
이소연은 1971년 안성 생으로 독일 뮌스터 국립 미술학교 회화과를 졸업하고 뒤셀도르프에 거주하며 활동하고 있다. 2007년 뒤셀도르프 콘라드 화랑에서 첫 개인전을 가지기 이전부터 그녀의 아름답고 기이한 자화상들은 여러 미술관 전시와 아트 훼어에서 선보였으며 높은 인지도를 가지고 있었다. 국내에서는 처음으로 조현화랑에서 소개되며 오는 6월 삼성미술관_리움의 “아트 스펙트럼 2008″에 초대되었다. 이소연은 자신의 신체적 컴플렉스를 극대화하여 만든 캐릭터를 다양한 배경과 소품으로 연출한 자화상을 통해 자신의 삶뿐 아니라 시대의 극히 일상적인 면모들을 놀라운 질감 표현으로 그려낸다. 그의 회화는 미술과 일상에서 보았던 이미지들의 기억이 합성되어 만들어내는 다양한 의미층을 담고 있어 이미지 세대 특유의 시각과 감성을 유감없이 발휘한다. 유화 테크닉을 고집하는 그의 회화는 명료하고 단호한 형태만큼 이나 명쾌한 색채와 발색 기법으로 강한 아우라를 뿜어낸다.
임자혁은 1976년 서울 생으로 서울 대학교 회화과와 판화과에서 수업후 미국 블룸필드힐의 크랜부룩 아카데미에서 회화 수업을 했다. 스스로를 “이미지 낚시꾼”이라고 부르는 작가는 수시로 무수히 그리는 드로잉을 통하여 시각적 경험이 이미지로 기억되고, 다른 이미지와 함께 연상되어 새로운 이미지를 만들어 내는 과정을 탐색한다. 그의 작품 세계는 생각과 상상의 실체만큼이나 가볍고, 그의 이미지 탐험처럼 유동적이어서 열린 해석을 자극하는 특성이 있다. 관객을 이미지 속에 흡수하는 입체적 벽화 작업은 이미 대학 시절에 시작했으며 그의 신선한 상상력이 십분 발휘되는 영역이다. <너, 나, 우리> 전에서는 화랑 벽면에 그가 선망하는 인물 ‘호랑이꼬리 여우 원숭이’를 그렸다. 서로 손을 잡고 전시를 구경하고 있는 듯한 한 쌍의 유인원은 ‘우리’의 우화적인 이미지일 수도 있겠으나. 해석은 전적으로 관객 각자에 달려있다.