Painting does not begin with so-called abstract art but recreates the silhouettes and postures of corporeality, and is already fully in operation in the face-landscape organization.
-Gilles Deleuze, A Thousand Plateaus
Lee Kwang-Ho is arguably Korea’s foremost realist painter. His portraits and landscapes transcend the conventional purpose of realistic representation and display a virtuosity of pictorial techniquethat pushes the boundaries of existing notions of painterly representation. It is easily recognizable that Lee Kwang-Ho’s works have included a wide spectrum of painting techniques ranging from early oil painting inspired by Pop Art, paintings that applied Renaissance perspective, to paintings influenced by Surrealist juxtaposition and layering techniques. However, even his closest followers may find his current fixation on still-life unexpected, if not unusual. Lee has devoted the past few years on portraiture. His recent project,Inter-View, for example, recorded the memories of 100 models whom he interviewed. The project consisted not only of representational paintings of the models and the narrative of their memories but also videos and objects d’art. The combination of the mediums made for a uniquely cohesive and integrated presentation. The emphasis of Inter-View was the presentation of both a pictorial and non-pictorial representation, based on Lee’s attempt to simultaneously present the contents of his deeply intimate and psychological interviews and the aura of the models’ physical reality, which arose in the process of exploring the fundamental issues of painterly representation and of painting itself.
An important question to consider is what are the fundamental issues of painting for Lee? In general, there are two main purposes of painterly reproduction. The first purpose is concerned with how the subject presents itself in the gaze of its viewers through the process of representation. A subject constructs its own “identity” within its pictorial element. This identity is uniquely constructed through painterly representation. Like an identity of a mythical being, identity of the subject in a painting keeps its distance from its viewer. Moreover, it is called an “identity” of the subject because its context is created through shared memory once it is represented in the pictorial space. Therefore, a painting is defined here as a memory device, or a record-keeping device, and at the same time, a device that historicizes and mythologizes the depicted subject. Thus what we discover in painterly representation is a reflective mechanism that reverts the present to an uncertain past and to an undefined mythical moment. Therefore the second purpose of painterly reproduction emphasizes painterly vision over the painted representation. If the viewer is able to construct a structure for painterly vision and if we call that possibility “the construction of vision”, then painterly representation is not limited to the creation of an identity of the subject and thus the question to be asked here is how the subject can be constructed as part of the ‘system’.
Currently, the subjects of Lee Kwang-Ho’s paintings are “cacti”. Why cacti? What is the artist’s underlying interest in painting this strange-looking plant? Let’s begin by first describing the plant. Cacti are classified in the order Cactaceae and are inhabitants of Central and South America, especially in the vast deserts of Mexico. Evolution of the cacti can be traced back 30 to 40 million years, after the division of African and American continents, which explains why the cacti are indigenous to the Americas. However, it is said that a type of cactus called the Rhipasalis baccifera existed before the discovery of the Americas by Christopher Columbus in 1492. The seeds of Rhipasalis baccifera were carried to other continents by certain species of birds and the cacti family spread rapidly after the discovery of the New World. It became known for its wide range of uses, as food, in medicine, feed for animals, for decoration, among others. Nevertheless, there are now many species that are considered in danger of extinction and are thus being conserved. Cacti have evolved over millions of years to survive in severe dry climates by preserving moisture, which has resulted in a unique and somewhat strange appearance. The cross-sections of the stems are spherical and it has a slick, slippery surface. Both characteristics are essential to the harsh climates in which the plants are located and are based on evolution as a way to minimize evaporation. The cacti “leaves” serve several evolutionary purposes. They form a beneficial yet delicate balance between loss and drawing moisture, as well as protection from potential predators. Moreover, since the spikes of the cacti are incapable of photosynthesis, this task is carried out by the stem, which counts for its greenish hue and its generally large girth – the latter of which makes many cacti resemble a large green column. In actuality, Lee’s cacti are enlarged versions of much smaller specimens. Each of his paintings represent a different “character”, like different roles played by various actors in a play. They each form a complex body. For instance, some give the impression of tenacity due to their thickness, while others are reminiscent of a monument or a forgotten hero due to their sharpness and unique shape of their stem(s) and menacing armor of spikes. Still others are roundish and lure in the viewer coquettishly with its brightly colored bloom mounted atop its primary stem. Others are long and its stems are decorated with blooming flowers or surrounded by a twisting set of spikes. Each species, like each individual plant, are equipped with a unique combination of stem and spikes. Each of Lee’s cacti are isolated against a brilliant white background, resembling an isolated human individual.
To a great extent, both Inter-View and Cacti projects are comprised of an identical “system”. They are both works based on the investigation of the “sameness” and “difference” of individuals constructed in the structure of painting, what is constructed in painterly representation, and what it modifies or changes. Although in theory, painterly representation may merely function to imitate, or outright copy the physical reality, prominence of painting as an art form for nearly the entire history of human existence suggest that it transcends this purely functional need and it further exceeds Benjamin’s concept of the production of aura. In fact, painterly representation represents a grander contemplation, and is related to the expression of individual and artistic vision in the context of our expansive history of individuality itself. In other words, painterly representation is by nature, an independent, creative activity within the context of production. In contrast to photography and film, painting and drawing is formed using the mechanics of the artist’s own body. The latter two are thus more direct and are organic mediums that produce an image. It is within this context and set of assumptions that a painter struggles, through repetition, experience, and training, to choose an independent method of reproducing a subject. As such, mere imitation of likeness cannot be the ultimate goal of a painter. This is only a general goal and many can achieve this level simply through practice. Therefore, painterly representation is simply a level that can be surpassed in reaching the ultimate goal. However, painterly representation constitutes a closed system consisting of an isolated language of the body, proof of individuality, sealed with a “signature”. This is because the “individual spheres” realized by the individual painter vary from piece to piece, from project to project, and ultimately they take on an individual identity. With this in mind, it can be said that the greatest gift we can expect from an artist is individual identity, created within the context of an equally unique language. Lee has continuously sought to veer away from the often-trod path that many others opted to follow in depicting the subjects through “painterly reproduction” and his proposition to create an individual sphere is in line with this thought.
Lee’s current cacti project complements his past work in portraiture. Both projects have followed identical production processes. Lee first observed the subject and photographed it, followed by the process of re-observing and sketching the subject. The artistic intervention generally involves the process of thinking about different ways the peculiarities of the subject can be physically expressed. For Lee, this entailed a variety of methods including scratching the canvas with a knife, creating a unique texture with minimal amount of paint, rubbing and scouring the surface, all with the intent to ascribe different part of the canvas with noticeable levels of physical delicacy (or roughness). He displays technical perfection which distinguishes him as a master realist painter. ‘Sensual’ relationship between the models and artist portrayed in his portraiture project is carried over into his cacti project. In the process of enlarging a small cactus into a larger canvas, the canvas is filled with a sensational or an animalistic atmosphere. Moreover, some of the works resemble a human being or a monument, while others evoke a distinctly phallic aura. The slight distinction between Lee’s portrait project and his cacti project is that the works in Inter-View were all of the same size, arranged in a white wall in a somewhat abstract space like a collection of specimens, while the works in the current cacti project are painted on canvases of different sizes and each creates its own independent space within the canvas. In addition, the cacti are extremely dramatic and intense in comparison to the portraits. It is almost as if the inner identities and bottled-up emotions of the human models exploded and solidified to create cloud-like surfaces (one work in particular resembles a mushroom cloud). These works evoke so much sexuality that it even suggests an animalistic aura. It suggests a direct relationship between the intensity of the painter’s vision, overwhelmed by ambition and desire, demanding an intense gaze and burrowing into the inner reality of the cacti. Each cactus painting presented in the exhibition is a part of Lee’s larger Cactus project but they are all distinctly essential and integral to the entire project which can be recognized as an entry point for the entire structure. Just as each portrait contained a structure and certain level of sameness for his portrait project, each cactus painting parallels the same structure.
Unlike Lee’s cacti and portrait paintings, his landscapes are not attempts of painterly representation within the context of a unique individual sphere. His objectives here are different. His landscapes are not formed of a specific series of people or cacti that he has come to know but rather they are empty spaces within seemingly random places found in nature. Perhaps one could consider landscapes as another series explored by the artist but this thought is disrupted by the very ‘transient and ephemeral nature of landscape’ with respect to the artist’s vision. In particular, Lee has painted for this exhibition, the movement of skies and winds within the empty spaces found in forests, and between patches of thickets. For each landscape painting, Lee personally visited the site and then photographed it. Then, referring to the photograph as the original, Lee began to paint. Although these landscapes are common and ordinary in Korea, they rouse a distinct atmosphere depending on the light, and mood of the air. The sceneries depicted in the landscapes are widely accessible to hikers or passerby and are therefore inscribed in our memory. The scenes recall visions, either lyrical or pastoral as if the scene was witnessed unintentionally, seemingly neutral and appearing to lack emotional content. They are not seen in the context of scientific or experiential information. Lee’s landscapes seem to be void of any distinctive sense of pathos. For lee, these landscapes were a type of “blank space”. When asked about the meaning of these landscapes, Lee only gave an ambiguous response. He suggested that the landscapes represent “free time” and a “surplus”, i.e. a type of a “vacation”. In reality, there is no subject, per se. There is nothing to suggest the kind of research carried out by Lee on the essence of painterly representation of his subject either. What he is reproducing here are background of the places and he has portrayed light and air. This brings a sense of relaxation and leisure on the canvas. The viewer can imagine whether the ambition behind painting these landscapes was based on the desire to paint backdrops, which were omitted from cactus and/or portrait paintings.
All paintings produce abstractness. More specifically, as longas itis an artistic endeavor, a painting is aproduction of vision. To the extent that a given painter is conscious of this claim, his work will either stop at mere conventional mimetic representation or advance into revelations of previously unimaginable realms of the abstract. The expression of abstractness in a painting is notexclusive to the reductionist conditions typical of Greenberg’s conceptions, nor are conventional “abstract signifiers” necessary. Abstractness of a painting is not dependent on its internal assumptions and conditions, but rather, it is a production of the viewer’s vision and thus the work of Magritte and Picabia can be considered abstract. Seamless integration of the conceptual and visual conditions in these painters’ works serve as a mechanism by which the production of the abstract is precipitated and facilitated. Thus it follows that a careful analysis of the various oppositional conceptual and visual elements within a given painting is absolutely necessary. Painterly abstraction in Lee’s work is drawn from his chosen subjects from everyday life such as people, cacti, landscapes, and their serialization, which further becomes significant in defining the slight distinctions between our conventional ideas of what constitutes a portrait, still-life, or landscape. Lee’s portrait is similar to his still-life paintings in the sense that the subject is recorded on the canvas from a predetermined distance. Conversely, the still-life emphasizes the character of the subject as if it was a substitute for a portrait, and his landscapes are constantly recalling parts of the setting (background) that will remain unpainted. The overbearing realistic representation on these paintings makes us reconsider painterly illusion as a disparate element. Therefore, painting provides a setting for the viewer’s gaze. A painting is inherently sensual but at the same time it implicates our gray matter.
A viewer looking Lee Kwang-Ho’s paintings are faced with the challenges of not only organizing the general structure of the works, but also encountering the abundance of visual stimuli of each work. Therefore, as spectators, we are only witnessing the introduction of the adventurous investigation directly undertaken by Lee as to what is raison d’etre for painting. This new perspective of our role as indirect participants engaged in a deeper investigation about the nature of painterly representation, and of art itself, gives us a clearer insight into what a painting of a cactus can express about its own existence, the time and place in which it dominates and what it has to say about life. It is in this sense that the cactus is united with the spectator’s created vision.
By Jinsang Yoo/ Art Critic
