Rhee, Jeong-Yoen started from concrete forms, developed her painting until absolute abstraction, and pursues form again. But her latest forms are more essential and original rather than real and symbolic. More than half of her forms such as bones and bamboos are probably conceived in her unconsciousness.
So, even though she did not predict such a result before, we can say that her painting is about the birth of a form itself. I can sense that her painting hints the start of a certain life or event and further signifies the birth of a form in the painting.
At the half point of her life, Rhee, Jeong-Yoen sensitively tries to hear and face with what this unique texture of her painting tells her. She more focuses on the fact that those forms such as bones or bamboos are empty inside than their forms themselves.
A form comes out of the emptiness. There is the empty in nature. If we try to hear it, then the empty moves. It moves toward a form.
Rhee, Jeong-Yoen has come here in this way. And this point is the very place of start and birth. It is a new start of painting made of nature-like texture and a form like a life born out of that texture.
Encounter between such a form and texture in the two-dimensional plane is crucial for her painting. This is the beginning of a certain event. This event does not have a title yet. If we say her work as a painting in a traditional way, we just miss her uniqueness. It is as if she begins to encounter such an unknown event.
Rhee Jeong Yoen has reached here. And of course there are others who have arrived here like her. I can say that here have all arts reached.
(Chiba Shigeo/Art Critic)
## Economic Review / Life & People / Dong-chul Kwon (Art Columnist) / 03.20.2017 ##