I didn’t know it was already dawn,
thinking the darkness that covers us will last forever.
- Donglim Han, 『A bird of dawn in a faded black and white photograph』
Opacity/Transparency
There is one thing/color spreading over a certain frame. Another one is laid on top of it. Stacked up one after another, the pile becomes a dense composite layer. Sooyeon Hong’s work starts as she piles up countless paint films on a “bare empty canvas.” [1] The pigment is not filtered or mediated. Due to the constant procedure of adding, the canvas, coincidently or inevitably, turns into opaque. Hong’s frame is, however, still lucid as if no matter how many times you pour the water, it is still clear. None the less, there are traces of time, labor and paint in that clarity. Then what makes one to say that the canvas is transparent when it has no choice but to be opaque? And what does it means to say a canvas is transparent or opaque?
Opacity shows the terminal condition. What lies underneath each layer is of no interest at all. What is important here is the thing in front of our eyes. On the contrary, however, transparency shows not only a final condition but also an initial state, and goes further to show the gap in-between. As it was in the adding water example mentioned above, in transparency we see preliminary condition, the surface, and distortion and refraction happening in-between. The canvas of Hong is of consistent and even monochrome which makes people perceive the color as opaque. Interestingly, there are unfamiliar shapes (and colors) tore up and entered into that even surface, stirring the existence. Those are not still but floating, sliding, and eventually permeates the opaque surface. And by means of those strange existences, what seemed opaque surface becomes translucent, exposing each layer.[2]
“Layers” formed upon transparency
The fact that the opaque surface is actually transparent and hidden layers are revealed in that process attests that Sooyeon Hong’s work is not about colors dominating on the canvas but layers and theirs relationship to each other (colliding, sliding or touching). Let’s take a simple example first. An hour can be divided into minutes and a minute can be broke up into seconds. We live a day, a year and a lifetime in this sense, and the beginning and the end of life is in this framework as well. Setting an easy-to-convert unit and seeing the world only through that measurement is the fundamental way of perceiving the world. Of course life is a continuum not a segment as we maintain lives between seconds. Things that we forgot or erased also do exercises to keep on living. Then, does the space between segments, that we did not realize (erased or forgotten), not exist in the first place? Started from a simple example, the question just got more complicated.
The object safely staying inside Hong’s work is not of recognizable form and for that, what catches viewer’s eye first is a single color filling up the whole frame. When one encroaches into the silence caused by monochrome surfaces, delicate trembling that quivers the silence is detected. That amorphous shape looks like a solidified image but after a while, it shows its afterimage. The contour of an image does not stick but slides through mystery spaces among segments. Without any specific point of arrival, it keeps its slide meaning, it is based on contingency and improvisation.
In fact, Hong’s artistic process is quite different. To a certain extent, the method is quite calculative and intentional. A layer exist as both an absolute form and an afterimage for the next one simultaneously through the factors like carefully planned slopes of canvas, controlled measures of paint to make one layer float on the other one, the resulting transparency from that, and finally, the time frame when all those are happening. At first sight, this structure can be recognized as a different form but as those layers piles up, the whole canvas develops into an organic image that slowly evolves. Despite the effort to stipulate it by dividing it into a smallest unit, it evolves toward a new point. Piling, overlapping, revealing, and hiding, in other words, the implication can be obtained through “layers” not just a single “layer.” Another important point here is the placement of “layers” surrounded by a large empty space. A subtle tension forms as those “layers” hold possibility to expand further yet not infinitely and do not anchor in a specific place.
Life is a continuum
So far we have learned how to reflect upon layers, got used to distinguishing layers one by one, and went one step forward to believe that it is the truth without a doubt. Rather than speculating on a continuum, we found points of division, restructured them logically and as a result of that, sacrificed what lies between the points. This is what Sooyeon Hong pays attention and restores. Her color field is constant in silence and the alteration is so slow that it is calm and quiet in general. Reaching back, however, our life, full of trivial and slow changes that we almost forgot and ignored, is much bigger and significant to spot and mark a definite division point. Hong identifies this and suggests it in her work. Let’s look around then. Now, do not you think you get to see familiar things as strange and out of ordinary? As a matter of fact, the thing that we recognized as a layer exists as a life of transparent film. Let’s keep our minds on the joyful laughs which were to break the silence inside that space and the sound of “layers” colliding. Let’s listen.
By Daebum Lee / Art Critic
[1] The surface of Sooyeon Hong’s painting is in flat monochrome so sometimes the canvas can be understood as “empty” (nothing's in there). In this context, however, this passive notion of “empty” is to be used to mean “transparent” or “clear.” Many folds of clear layers look as though there is nothing in-between but as they pile up, inevitable (accidental) traces are left.
[2]The act of finding transparency in opacity accompanies a function of disclosing each layer buried in clarity as well. Though it is possible to recognize the existence of layers, it is not easily seen. In Sooyeon Hong’s work, however, the layers masked in the realm of lucidity are visualized by converting opacity to transparency.
