I recently visited London-based Korean Artist Yoo Jaeyeon at Union Gallery where her exhibition ‘Dream Weaving’ is currently on display (until 21 October) to learn more about her latest body of work. This is not Yoo’s first solo exhibition here in London but it feels special to her. She shared with me that she feels this way as her first exhibition in London featured pieces that were different and this exhibition showcases her more established artistic style.
Yoo creates paintings that present the unknown space that exists between reality and fantasy. She is interested in exploring a sense of isolation – the freedom that one can feel when being by oneself. “I feel,” Yoo said, “that it is good to be alone. It doesn’t have to mean a negative thing. It is very easy to get a kind of freedom [from being alone] and I really wanted to put those ideas into any new scene I put on canvas.”
Yoo recalls that she always wanted to be an artist, and to be a person who keeps making art. She shared with me that she has “enjoyed creating things [and making stories] from a young age.” Yoo spent the first few years of her life in Korea, and then her family moved to the US for a period of time. Talking of this, Yoo shared: “I clearly remember I felt at the time that language itself is really limited. I found it very difficult to express my intentions and I think that is why I spent my childhood drawing something or telling other people through drawing rather than explaining with words.”
The most surprising thing about being an artist, Yoo shared with me is the opportunity it presents to meet new people. “It is”, she said, “very interesting to hear what they [the people she meets] are thinking. I think after I finish the painting and it leaves my studio, that art feels not mine anymore, and I become one of the audience so I’m really happy to talk to people about what I’ve created.”
We spoke a little bit about how she brings her art work to life. The very important rule Yoo has for herself is not to work from photographs. This is important to her as she does not wish to mimic real life completely. Instead, she uses simple line drawings taken from real life as her main reference. “Sometimes,” she shared, “I feel like I’m not really painting the piece, rather that I am moving my hand and the painting is bringing itself to life. It is important to me that I paint intuitively.”
The main challenge of being an artist, Yoo share with me, is feeling that what she has created is ‘finished’. Talking of this in a little more detail, she shared with me that she paints “several paintings at the same time because of how long the drying time is. It doesn’t feel right to focus on one painting for so long. This makes it really hard for me to tell if its finished. All the paintings change a bit every day.”
Yoo described her paintings as “night time paintings”. In particular, the inspiration to create her ‘night walker’ series came from from personal memories of the time she has spent walking around London at night. Yoo described this as being a feeling that would come to her when she passed a particular park. This park is, she shared, one that during the day time is loud and crowded, and full of different people. When it is closed at night, however it exists without all that activity and noise leaving Yoo with a sense of sentimentality and peace that she wanted to capture.
“I’m interested in artists that made/make their creations at night time, like novelists and poets, who create after they are finished with their own day job. The time of the night is quite related to me and I thought in this kind of urban area people find it difficult to have their own time, and are constantly surrounded by lots of different stimuli and relationships. Walking alone at night gives me a lot of inspiration and ideas. It keeps me wondering what’s next or what came before. Thoughts like, ‘Why are they here?’ It also makes me wonder about their hidden stories.”
You will note that Yoo’s pieces portray a single figure and some portray figures of animals. The two elements combined, she said “create a sense of relationship”. Yoo feels it is important to include the figure as part, not just the human being, but a human surrounded by nature. The most fascinating thing about her artworks is that the viewer can look at the scenes for a long time taking in all the different elements. Even without the facial features a sense of inquisitiveness and curiosity remains. The direction and what the characters (both human and otherwise) are doing is still there, left for you to explore. Each of Yoo’s pieces create a whole landscape rather than divided parts that place the human at the forefront, and I think that is what makes them so special. Talking of this a little, Yoo said, “I thought it was good to have a fair regulation – nothing is too important, everything is very flat. I didn’t want to put too much information on the central figure. No facial expressions. Also I didn’t really want to make it as a specific gender or colour. It doesn’t mean they are nobody, but that they could be anybody.”
The blue palette (cobalt blue) you see in her paintings is incredible, and it was this that actually first caught my eye. Given the wonderful bright colours, I was actually surprised to learn that her paintings are oil paintings. I was also surprised to learn that she is able to create paint so bright and colourful from oils. Blue is a colour that feels comfortable to Yoo, and personal to her. She finds that it is a colour that makes it easy to bring in and relate to different colours.
“Sometimes I use the pigment and mix it myself but using the tube, and the medium and I really enjoy mixing the pigment with the oil. Sometimes I choose the pigment with a lot of transparency as I want to create lots of layers. I rarely use white as it makes it difficult to maintain the layers. That’s why it doesn’t look like a traditional oil painting.“
Yoo kindly spent time talking to me about three different paintings, all unique and special in their own way, but all of which had captivated my attention in turn. These are the ‘The Night Runner’, ‘The Thinker on the Rock’ & ‘Butterflies Dream.’
The painting pictured right (‘The Night Runner’) I learned, is one Yoo has been painting at a slow tempo over the last three years. This is why the painting has so many different layers that the audience (speaking from experience) can spend a long time looking at and exploring it. As you look at it for longer, you start to see the painting come to life.
The inspiration for the piece came from people jogging, Yoo shared: “I saw lots of people jog, whether raining or snowing, and I thought they were amazing. It is very hard to find joggers at night time because its dangerous and cold so I wanted to create this scenario of a woman jogging by herself in the forest.”
Yoo values surroundings and considers the human experience to be very intricate. “Emotions,” she said, “and thoughts don’t always come from within, sometimes they come from the outside.” The relationship between the two is interesting, and something she explores. Talking of nature’s role in her art, Yoo wanted to make nature an animated figure. If you look closely at this piece, you might spot blinking eyes, or the green arms hugging the white figure. The white, bird like figures you see were included as a poetic element. These endearing, friendly additions act as a companion to the protagonists, and have not been put in human form as Yoo felt that a single human figure in each painting is sufficient. “It doesn’t have any particular meaning or message”, Yoo commented, “it is just like a friend.”
Fun fact about this painting: The strings you see were something that Yoo added in last minute as she felt that painting was missing something and needed something more. She added the strings with spray paint – it was (in Yoo’s words) a non-logical process that sometimes paintings need.
I feel a great deal of attachment to the painting on the left aptly titled ‘The Thinker on the Rock’, and my gaze kept being pulled back to it as Yoo shared with me more about how she goes about imaging, and creating her pieces.
“I put lots of different layers into my paintings and as time goes by these make new colours. If you look closely you can still see the stripes the human body has fast brush strokes but that stroke is the first stroke I made when I started and I wanted to leave the traces as I want people to see all the different layers.”
With this piece, Yoo wanted to create a scenery which is very related to personal emotions. “I wanted to put some kind of breezy environment which is why I felt it needed to be a high altitude.” Yoo opted for a female character rather than a male as she wanted to capture the hair blowing freely in the wind. “I love the dual coded concept of infinity and the limitation of time.I think a lot about that while I’m painting and I find that putting the human figure and massive nature it gives some kind of idea about comparing two different moments. With this piece, I felt like it was good to have the stripe details of the rock, so I created a new scene of landscape rather than mimicking the real site. It is all referenced from mountainous areas in America.”
As to the animals you see, Yoo shared with me that she walks every day to her studio (and back again) and the time allows her path to cross with lots of different animals – foxes, missing cats, sometimes even raccoons. “I feel that creatures are so important to the earth. I love humans but sometimes I feel that we are doing too much so that’s why I make their presence blurry. I want people to match their own experience or memory with the figure.”
Learning more about the thought and detail that went in to creating the piece pictured on the right was really special. Yoo shared with me an old story of a man who fell asleep, and in his dream became a butterfly. When he awoke, even though he knew it had been a dream, he still felt real and a profound sense of peace. That idea motivated Yoo to create a piece in a “space like and surreal” setting.
“I was drawn towards these ancient creatures – having been in existence long before humans. I wanted my paintings to encompass a plain idea, with everything regular and same. I wanted nature to be a part of, not just a background to, images of people”.
Bonus: Yoo shared that she adds the moons to her paintings when she is ready to start completing the painting, kind of like she is ringing to bell to let people know she is serious about the painting. A sign of being ready and “OK! let’s go!”