▲ Re-Genesis, 91 × 116㎝ Korea Lacquer Painting with Nature Materials on Hemp Cloth, 2001

Rhee Joeng-yoen started from the shape and asked for a new shape when it arrived at the place where the shape melted. It must have sought a more fundamental form, not something or a symbol. And perhaps more than half of it was unconsciously caught in the shape of this bone-like bamboo.

However, what is happening here can be said to be the emergence of the shape itself. While it looks like an implicit expression of life or the beginning of things, or in such an appearance, I feel like I’m witnessing that kind of “thing” that I want to see.

▲ 162 × 130㎝

For the age of turning back in life, it is limited to non-artificial, natural materials, unique textures, but creating a texture that I have long admired since I was a child, and it speaks to myself While listening, I meet this kind of form.

That’s the same. By the way, she seems to place more emphasis on the hollowness of this bone-like shape than the fact that it is something. The shape is rather born from “emptiness”.

▲ 193.5 × 259㎝

There is intrinsic emptiness. Listen to it. Then, the “emptiness” moves. It moves toward the shape. Yes, Rhee Joeng-yoen has reached this point. But this is the place of origin, the place of occurrence. It is the beginning of a new painting consisting of the natural texture of the skin itself and the form of the original life form.

And, alternatively, the core is to meet such a form and such a texture on a plane. It can be the beginning of an “event”. This “event” has no name yet. You can call it a painting as usual, but if you call it so, it seems that the characteristics of her work will fade. I wonder if she is beginning to meet such an unknown event, not a painting.

▲ 72.7 × 91㎝

Rhee Joeng-yoen has reached that point. And of course, she is not the only one who has reached this point. That is the place where the whole of art is now reaching.

Chiba Shigeo / Art Critic

## Economic Review / Life & People / Dong-chul Kwon (Art Columnist) / 03.20.2017 ##