As In: Paik Jeehee
At first, there was nothing. About twenty years ago, Paik Jeehee stood before a blank image after playing with language. At that moment, she seemed to float in weightlessness. She placed a dot in empty space and began to imagine. From that imagined world, she connected the order and conditions around her and created space of connection. From a dot in emptiness, dots linked to other dots, then grew into lines and planes. They became signs filled with meaning.
For more than ten years, these signs formed a symbolic language. They were divided into exhibitions such as 《Inherent Ego》(1997), 《Inside Knot》(1998), 《Many》(1999), 《Unfold》(2000), 《6 Mind》(2001), 《Luminous Solitude》(2003), 《Talk》(2006), and 《As In》(2010). Each title was linked to clusters of words like World cloud, Sweet Talk, many, too many, suddenly, teeming, above, self made, then, therefore, muse, dewy, afloat, webbed, the outer cavity, knot to be, cross word, and more. After studying philosophy in Korea and first encountering fine art in the United States, English became a natural language for her titles.
These words come slowly or suddenly while she works. Most of them are fragments. They may begin in books or memories, in films or plays, in nature, in the shelf, in unconscious thoughts, in relationships, or in notes that look like scribbles. They feel like syllables left out of poems or novels. These broken words meet a deep inner source and, just before appearing on the surface of a painting, move in constant cycles of gathering and scattering. Through this process, her own forms and colours appear.
Her idea of painting can be understood not through art history or theory, but through lived experience. She has built a visual language that no one else can define. Over time, she created her own space to release it. In her recent work, painters exist between language and space. The layers that form the surface have become clear. Language lies hidden within the surface, while space builds layers around it. Because of what is concealed behind these unseen layers, painting creates its illusion.
Her private visual language supports her painting like the ground beneath the earth. It is not a simple system of signs or symbols. It turns into energy through the tension of many unseen layers. She searches for these hidden elements like someone walking through a maze. Behind the surface of the painting, they unfold like shadow play. Brief moments build up and wait for their time.
Now, these traces should no longer control the surface from behind. They should move outward into space. By accepting contrasts and allowing clashes in language, she can cross the layers of painting and space. Through this, she can reach a stronger effect of movement and image.
Any artist can imagine theatre, film, or motion when given a situation. If she were given a flexible maze-like space with paintings and a few objects, she would not create a dramatic story. Instead, she would quietly build her own history of images. With a minimal approach, she would reveal the shapes, colours, and movements of the many signs she has gathered over time.
This imagination began with the first blank space. For nearly twenty years, her experiences and images have filled her, and now, she can guide them freely. Because of this, she is ready for any challenge or temptation. The traces of her inner language form a kind of defense.
Her new work makes clear her long-held idea of painting a situation. She does not depend on chance. She connects time, shown in brushstrokes and marks of thought, with space, shaped by shifting viewpoints, and with layers of memory that have waited. On a flat surface, she overlaps negative and positive forms, stirring the hidden instinct of language to return. She also controls the moment when forms seem to flow like liquid.
The world keeps trying to fill what is empty. We fill buildings, fill our minds with knowledge, even fill a bowl to eat. Yet the sky remains empty. Late at night or early in the morning, we look toward the end of illusion, but there is no end. In art, especially in painting, illusion is completed through repeating acts of filling and erasing. In Paik’s emptiness, language once filled the space, then was pushed aside and replaced by image. Or it hid behind the painting. With her own signs and images, she builds a narrative that slowly begins to move.
Will the viewers sense this intention?
Lee Kwanhoon (Curator, Project Space Sarubia)