Portfolio Yooree Yang

YO O R E E YA N G B L A N K

I . S TAT E M E N T

II. PORTFOLIO

III. CV

I

M U S T T H E M O R N I N G A LWAY S R E T U R N ?

I paint landscapes in between, on the decline of marvelous twilight.The time between dog and wolf, when eye can only guess forms and masses before they melt away into the darkness. A frontality and an absence of vanishing point border on infinity, suggest indeterminable darkness. It is not about darkness world or nothingness prevailing against a vision. There is rather what is returned, reversed in our consciousness and allow the void and the darkness to give birth to a new reality.

I am now “in the black that illuminates the spirit”(Samuel Beckett).

This nocturnal vision, the preliminary vision, feeds what becomes mental landscape. My painting reigns necessarily, organically, under the influence of the visible world, its substance and its climate. It is no longer a simple object from outside, a rivaled contemplation for reality. It is not inertia or passivity but discovery. I see the darkness in my landscape, I see it still in my mind.

My work has affinities with those of Luc Tuymans, Giorgio Morandi, De Chirico and its metaphysical paintings, as well as Caspar David Friedrich for his vision of romantic landscape. My last work was inspired by “A Lake” of Philipe Grandrieux , Franz Kafka and Samuel Beckett’s universe. A new approach in my painting is structuring itself.

At the same time I remain faithful to the principles of my work, the simplicity of my universe and an axis of opposition followed for several years.

The simplicity, regarding the image as

well as the means used. No figure, re duced palette, no history approached.

The landscape penetrable in opposition to another, that colorful nuance, dark tones and monotonous even opaque, return impenetrable.

The image is not born in a comparison, it is rather born in the proximity of two distinct realities. The farther, the clearer the relationship of two realities, the stronger the image, the more it holds the power of emotion and poetic reality.

This oneiric drift makes all uncertain and it approaches much better the truth in secret. The uninterpreted and mysterious universe. Its illegibility leaves empty. This void is present on the canvas. It is sufficient in itself.

A geometrized architecture devoid of function stands out from these landscapes deployed in the darkness.The construction parachuted on the canvas extinguishes what’s left of signified and signifier. However t he construction produces the new reference and discloses the ontological function of the image when it make contact with nature. (which does not produce the meaning or history itself. It is simply present, mysterious.) The dual compositions lead to common agreement.

The narrative disappears, the causes and effects are lost. Figuration finds a frame, which can be a rivaled meditation for reality.

“There where we have both darkness and light at a same time, we also have the inexplicability” Samuel Beckett

II

BLANK MODULE

P h o t o g r a p h e s , b / w f i n e a r t p r i n t o n m a t t p a p e r , Wo r k i n p r o g r e s s , 2 0 1 5

BLANK

Essay by Gautier Lesturgie

The term « blank » comes from the French word « blanc » or the proto-germanic « blank ». More than the color, white is what is not « really », the unthinkable nothing : a white wedding, a blank page, a blank shot, a blank computer screen, etc. thus it is never the absolute « nothingness » but rather a simulation or a container waiting for content - whether it be of a mind, a space or a sheet.

How then can we think of « blank » singularly ? Blank seems to not exist in the concepts offered by Western thought. A blank space is a space in negative, following an erasure, a disappearance or (and) else, pending, in transit. It is an in-between : « », hole, void, vacant, absence, lack, free, silence, a memory lapse.

These derivations from which, many derivations in different resonances, could unfold, enable us to build several entrances into the work of Laure Catugier and Yooree Yang.

Stuck in its etymological root, to imagine a blank space is often to create a white projection - the white as the subtraction tonality. The color has a bound relationship to, is considered synonymous with the neutral, objective, or even innocent : « whiter than white ». Thus arises, a problematic relation with its « reverse » : black which builds here, directly within the language roots, problematic ideologies infectiously growing in past and current histories.

White is linked to « clean » whether it be of the mind, of actions or of a room. The Western notion of emptiness is bound to the contradictory and mythical absolute « absence » which neither the philosophy nor the cleaning ever succeeded in reaching. « The most remarkable thing is that in the West people hardly lend any importance to the inescapable truth - once cleared, the table remains a table - and they endlessly persist in wanted the table to be clearer, and cleaner […] » (1) This household concern inevitably leads us to the word « vacuum » from the latin « vacuus » for « void », in its definition of a space devoid of matter (which brings us in the 19th century invention of our cherished vacuum cleaner).

Coming back to our chromatic tonalities, it is interesting to note that the false opposition of white to black, sparks thoughts of the

void : nothingness as black hole.

In a first visual analysis, we find again these two imaginaries in Laure and Yooree’s works. In her photographs, Laure avoids the shadows, aspiring to planarity illusion, spaces’ translation into two dimensions. Here blank space is also flat, echoing the architectural tabula rasa. On the other hand, Yooree’s painted and photographed landscapes stagnate in a perpetual twilight : this very precise moment when we are hardly able to distinguish between forms and our imagination must compose a space in front of us.

This first distinction visible in the two artists’ works could perfectly illustrate the well known Jun’ichirõ Tanizaki’s essay’s In Praise of Shadow. Even though it is quite dated, it presents two antagonistic conceptions of the void competing in our daily uses.

“An empty space is marked off with plain wood and plain walls, so that the light drawn into it forms dim shadows within emptiness. There is nothing more. And yet, when we gaze into the darkness that gathers behind the crossbeam, around the flower vase, beneath the shelves, though we know perfectly well, it is mere shadow, we are overcome with the feeling that in this small corner of the atmosphere there reigns complete and utter silence, that there in the darkness, immutable tranquility holds way. The “Mysterious orient” which westerners speak probably refers to the uncanny silence of these dark places [...] Ultimately it is the magic of shadows.” (2) Precisely this mystery and, ambivalence seems to drive Yooree to look for a certain kind of tranquility, magnetism of the unfathomable. These different philosophical concepts which feed artistic imaginaries lead us with prudence towards a part of Buddhist philosophy’s concept of nothingness, « Śūnyatā ». Whereas in its Western conception the void is understood as a vacuum, a space that contains « things » not yet or no longer; in the Buddhist ideology and its derived aesthetics, the void is not a matter of negation but of the relation of the in-between. The in-between presence and absence, in-between of there is and there is not and the availability of each. Thus, a movement analogous to breathing, the void as the waiting for the full, where the opposed ceased of being opposed but rather are linked through a constant and indispensable flux.

Then, the void becomes also « pause », falling within a length of time - idea which brings us to a new blank’s derivation : the silence. As the emptiness, the silence is stuck in its impossible realisation. « There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot » (3). Thus, the silence could only be understood as a sequence, as the absence of presence, which arrives before or follows after. Laure’s aggressive hands’ clapping in her videos ROOM m2 and ROOM m3 (2015) attempt an absurd relation where the noise, then the silence, become the measure of the empty space.

In Yooree’s work, the silence exists in the alliance of the opposites and through a composition game, through maneuvers which connote, rather than attempt to represent the silence. The pictures are mute, depopulated : cleared from presence, the landscapes appear hostile, unfamiliar. « Depopulated, the landscape estranges, it renders uncanny [le paysage dépayse] : there is no more community, no more civic life, but it is not simply « nature » […] Uncanny estrangement occurs in the suspension of presence : the imminence of a departure or an arrival, neither good nor evil, only a wide space, and a generosity that allows this suspension to be thought and to pass ». (4) Unlike some of her previous work (notably her photographic work), Laure is present in her two videos : the body is here, it moves, hits, rubs. Yet, the absence of pictures, or rather, the reduction to the room’s measurements, allows only a ghostly presence. In a reverse process, she is giving back an identity, a visible face to Le Corbusier’s modulor’s system : attempt for a norm, once again revealed as absurd in Modulor1m83.

Blank can also be used as a verb : to erase, to bare, to undo, to empty, to dismantle, to vacuum up, to exhaust. Associated with a noun, blank renders the noun pointless - functionless. for both artists, the borrowed and depicted architectures are non-functional, non-constructive architecture, emptied, as with Malevitch’s Architectons who named

them « Blank architectures », « They become the theoretical tool that transforms the object into the object, dissolving its originally associated meaning ». (5). Thus, Yooree’s modules match this description, they are erased units : blanked, waiting containers.

Laure’s door (DOOR, 2015) is also cut from its function and become an absurd object stuck in its repetition and its « Jack-in-the-box » appearance.

The two artists’ represented, collected and uninhabited(able) spaces and objects are surprisingly present, substantial, mobile and even noisy. This is not here an attempt to avoid their differences by using the same verbal toolbox but rather to propose some axes to be continuously unfolded. « 0 Nothing is to something as zero is to number, as black is to color, as silence is to sound : neither simply its absence or a negation, nor yet just a variation on its theme […] » (6) Gauthier Lesturgie, 2015 (1) Françoise Bonardel, « The Path of Emptiness », in Voids : A Retrospective, Paris, Centre Pompidou, Zurich, JRP|Ringier, 2009.

(2) Junichirõ Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows (1933), London, Vintage Books, 2001, p. 32.

(3) John Cage, Silence : lectures and writings, Middletown, Wesleyan University Press, 1961, p. 8.

(4) Jean-Luc Nancy, The Ground of the Image, Fordham University Press, 2005.

(5) Iryna Karaush, « Kazimir Malevich and Architectons as Monument : On looking at Early Modernism », Vancouver, The University of British Columbia, 2007, p. 9.

(6) Sadie Plant, « Eleven Thoughts on Nothing », in Voids : A Retrospective, op. cit., p. 367.

UNTITLED, Oil on canvas, 90 ×70 cm, 2013

UNTITLED, Pencil on paper, A4, 2012

UNTITLED, Oil on canvas, 140 x 260cm, 2012

DOUBLE LANDSCAPE

Oil on canvas, 150 ×160 cm, 150 x 200cm, 2013

M E TA P H Y S I C A L L A N D S C A P E , GOLDEN MEAN II

Oil on canvas,180x220cm, 2011

The painting of Yooree Yang conveys a vivid sense of all possible states of transition. The moment of change is filled with a strong and suggestive chromaticity; its dynamic vibrations are impossible to grasp. A diffuse space opens up to a mountain landscape, which is not based on nature, but rather references a dreamscape. It conjures up an intermediate realm still closely linked to our reality and which in the end points to an inner world.

Text by Thamar Ette, Kurator Art@Tell, 2013

M E TA P H Y S I C A L L A N D S C A P E , G O L D E N M E A N I , O i l o n c a n v a s , 1 8 0 × 2 2 0 c m , 2 0 1 1

UNTITLED, Oil on canvas, 220 ×180 cm, 2011

L e f t : T W O M O U N TA I N S , O i l o n c a n v a s , 1 8 0 × 1 8 0 c m , 2 0 1 3 right:UNTITLED, Pencil on paper, A4, 2013

C L I M AT E

Oil on canvas,140x180cm, 140x180cm, 2015

A M U S E M E N T PA R K , O i l o n c a n v a s , 7 0 × 9 0 c m , 2 0 1 4

UNTITLED, B/W Print, 30 X 40 cm, 2011

H A R D - B O I L E D

N I G H T

Oil on canvas,30 x 40 cm, 2013

yooree@yooreeyang.com (+49)0176 7062 3631

Detlev-Bremer-Strasse 42, 20359, Hamburg www.yooreeyang.com /

https://berlinerpool.de/profile/view/yooree-yang member of Berliner pool & Yassemeqk

Education

2011/Master’s degree in Art, Art school in Marseille, France

D.N.S.E.P- Ecole supérieure d’arts et de design Marseille-Méditerranée , atelier Sylvie Fajfrowska, Piotr Klemensiewicz, France

2009/Bachelor’s degree in Art, Art school in Marseille, France

D.N.A.P- Ecole supérieure d’arts et de design Marseille-Méditerranée, atelier Sylvie Fajfrowska, Piotr Klemensiewicz, France

Solo Exhibition & Duo Exhibition

2015/ <BLANK> with Laure Catugier , curated by Gauthier Lesturgie, Asia Contemporary Art platform NON Berlin, Berlin, Germany

III

Y O O R E E YA N G

2013/ <Hard-Boiled Night> with Mathias Schech, Wostel, Berlin, Germany

2011/ <Faut-il toujours que le matin revienne? (Must the morning always return?)>, The B-Side, Thêatre de la catastrophe, Marseille, France

Group Exhibitions

2016/<Grand Prix de Peinture Saint-Grégoire>, Centre d’Animation de la Forge, Saint-Grégoire, France <MENSCHTIERWIR> curated by Elmar Lause, Affenfaust Galerie, Hamburg, Germany < Art on Campus>, WU, Vienna, Austria

<15 x 21>, Affenfaust Galerie, Hamburg, Germany

2015/<60 Jahre Kunst in Hamburg>, Affenfaust Galerie, Hamburg, Germany

2014/<Beyond the abstract and the concrete> curated by Kerstin Gonzales, L’espase de l’espèce, Berlin, Germany

Vi s u a l a r t i s t Born 1982 in Jeju, South korea lives and works in Hamburg

<Art@Tell:art at tellstrasse> curated by Thamar Ette, HSG Tell, St.Gallen, Switzerland <Platonic Rendezvous>, NON Berlin, berlin, Germany

<Start Up 2>, Gallery Pébéo (Espace Pébéo), Gemenos, France

<Der Absolute Zweifel> curated by Judith Hofer, Galerie Speckstrasse, Hamburg, Germany <Lunar Caustic>, Galerie Vincenz Sala, Paris, France

<Knoten.14>, Kolbenhof Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany <LAND’N SPACE>, HB55, Berlin, Germany

<Hallo Lichtenberg>, HB55, Berlin, Germany

2013/<Grand Prix de Peinture Saint-Grégoire>, Centre d’Animation de la Forge, Saint-Grégoire, France <Knoten.13>, Kolbenhof Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany <Tribu>, Galerie affenfaust, Hamburg, Germany <Yassemeqk>, Das Gift, Berlin, Germany

2012/<#Yassemeqk>, Korean cultural Service Berlin ( Koreanisches Kultur Zentrum Berlin), Berlin, Germany <Jungle Crap>, III Moscow international Biennale for Young Art, Moskau, Russia <Première Exposition>, Pont des Arts, Marcillac-Vallon, France <Yassemeqk>,Médiathèque du Pays des Vans, Les Vans, France

2011/<Vue sur la mer> curated by Romain Legros, Genève, Partenership with Heads, Geneve, Switzerland

Prize/ Artist Residency/ Project

2016/ 30éme Grand Prix de Peinture Saint-Grégoire, France 2014/ CC Project, NON Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Finalist in Art@Tell, St.gallen, Switzerland

Culture Space Yang Artist Residency, Jeju, Korea

2013/ 27éme Grand Prix de Peinture Saint-Grégoire, France 2012/ Material support by Pébéo, France