To begin with, one can say that the characteristics of Yoo Geuntaek's painting emerge from the materials, the texture and vitality in his work. Most of his work is done by painting on paper with chalk powder and Indian ink, and his technical practice has become more sophisticated in his recent work. The boldly sliding repetitive strokes, the sense of materials in softly colored surfaces with chalk powder, the expanding patterns like waves, the sharp but loose shapes as a glimmering apparition, especially the brush stroke making rhythmical moves as blurry snap photo shots; all of these construct an exquisite sense in Yoo's painting. Furthermore, there is a unique texture, which is produced by the repetition of erasing and exposing, multiple juxtapositions and layers washing and inclination. It is a texture that undoes, gathers, juxtaposes repeats, reveals and gets slipped. Or in opposition to that, it penetrates into, crushes and spreads on the paper. It propagates like tumors, or overflows like a flood. In this sense, his paintings enclose a rhythmic chaos.
More than anything, what's fascinating about his work comes from the point that it reveals time and movement. His work has body and energy.
The conversation between the body and subjects, the repetition of the movement between the two, such as speed reflecting the body, a slope and slide, the energy or breath and attitude of the body that confronts the subject, builds up the captivating quality of his paintings.
Another factor that makes his work fascinating is the disorientation and mystification of the subject matter. In many of his works, there are visual hallucinations, spirits, a sense of gazing through a window, entrancement and loneliness, and a psychological tension made by all those senses. Yoo's work has a sort of psychological tension; no matter it is a landscape painting or a painting of the interior of a room. He seems to be an artist with a magnificent basic instinct about the field of painting or painting as a field. His painting has a sense of fullness, and at the same time there is an energy of desolate loneliness that attracts our gaze. Such loneliness comes out of disorientation.
The significant changes in Yoo's work were made by his <The Scene Outside a Window> and <Five Gardens> series produced in1999 to 2000. The changes continued with the series <A Scene> and <Homage to Disappearance> realized between 2001 and 2004, changes that gave a distinctive look of Yoo's painting. The paintings with characters, fire and smoke, etc. in the images of groves, gardens and parks based on many short brush strokes are characteristic of the look that has been developed.
One can say that while such a brush stroke practice and its effects have, till recently, shown diverse variation, this is a function of a very essential aesthetic factor. Yet in his recent work it is again transformed, and constructs a totally different narrative and psychological space.
In the 2002 <A Scene> series, especially in those works subtitled as <Conversation>, <A Dinner> and <A Puzzling Routine>, we can keenly perceive such changes. The latter work is a painting of the interior of his new apartment, to which he moved to around that time. The subject of <A Dinner> is later modified as an animation work. (Yoo can be included in the group of artists who instinctively realized the meaning of contemporary medium of film and animation.)
The common features among <Conversation>, <A Dinner> and <A Puzzling Routine> are a reference to urban culture and everyday life, which the paintings are concealing. (More precisely, stealthily revealing in the way of concealing.) This characteristic is not new but has also appeared in his previous works to some extent. However, it is different from the previous work in that his work now encloses more free-spirited imagination and reality.
In particular, we can sense the characteristics from his <Linear Move> series, <Floor-Another Garden> series, <A Scene> series, <Forest> series, and <The Three Events at a Corner of Life> exhibited at the Savina art museum in 2004.
Whereas the <Linear Move> series deals with the state of his new, not yet organized apartment and the disorderly stuff scattered in the room, the unwitting and peaceful scene of his living room, in various ways, <Floor- Another garden> series is a work that transforms the disorganized living room floor with various stuff into 'a garden' where miniatures are juxtaposed and by doing so, the work gets disorientated (Depaysement). The latter series is especially reborn as a new scene named <Flood-Splash!> at this exhibition. <A Scene>, <Forest> and <The Three Events at a Corner of Life> series condenses the metaphors of our socio-political reality and the psychological tension that is caused by that reality. Among those, the <The Three Events at a Corner of Life> consists of three paintings each subtitled <Fence>, <Fire> and <Alley>, and the narrative that resembles filmic language mostly constructed by the connections among the three works suggest a vivid and intense awakening of our reality.
In this exhibition, the metaphoric method of the picture with latent narrative again continues with diverse variations. Such as the blazing house in a TV screen in the living room, six flags that might signify the six party talk vertically passing through with the garden as a background, and at the bottom of the picture, an 'Some nationalistic scene' with a microphone, a table and an ambulance can be the examples. In this sense, the boy floating in the middle of the picture as if a freeze-frame shot (or as if he was soared from a jumping cushion) seems peculiar. Some works display surrealistic situations involving clothes, plants or flowers floating in the living room where the family is. The <Flood-Splash!>, filled with many objects and characters like a miniature-sized house, furniture, displays the same feeling.
Particularly, in this series of work, seeing how the transformation of scale causes both disorientation (depaysement) and develops a story that gives an interesting pleasure. Among the objects, some historical icons that might only be able to be seen in a Korean modern history photo diary are snuck into the picture. Not just the objects, but also the disoriented overall space becomes a playground for metaphors, puzzles, concealment and revelation.
<Two Conversation> is a work that began from a sketch at a zoo in the summer. It is a very common scenery, nevertheless, it is altered into a scenery that conceals some sorts of secrets, narratives and concepts of an incident.
Sometimes the image of the artist appears in the picture like a phantom. There is an artist carrying sketching materials in a forest, or an artist carrying a picture of the forest in which he is. We can see the artist's consciousness in the picture that deals with such a familiar subject matter with a symbolic meaning such as an artist reflecting himself in a mirror. (We have seen this from Van Gogh.) The <A Scene> series is a work, on which the artist has long been working. 'Scene' emerges out of film, and in that sense, it is different from 'landscape.' : it is a scene that has occasional and narrative meanings. The series of <A Window at Noon> is also very interesting among his recent work. This series adds a new modern reverberation to Yoo's formative aesthetics and psychological awakening power. The artist himself says that he will continue expanding and developing this work.
By Sung, Wankyung / Art Critic, Professor of Inha University
(Translated by Sung Youn Lim)
