Cats Painted by Yoon-kyung Cho
All the people in the world want to tell about themselves and be listened by others. The more people respond to or sympathize with your story, the more popular you are. Politicians and broadcasters show their distinguished abilities to deliver the story through word of mouth. Actors say their say through performance, dancers do so through motion, literarg men do so through writing, and scholars do so through study. It is called as "expression" in the field of art.
One needs story about which he wants to say and technique by which he delivery the story in Order to "express" something. Arts are classified into mang genres according to the technique for delivery of story. There are various techniques for delivery of story in the field of modern art. Moreover, there are all kinds of materials and techniques. So there has been the time when the very technique for delivery of story becomes art. It is called as "methodology." However, such a trend did not last long. Since it was the delivery of little substance, it was not welcomed.
It is important for artists to make a story and improve effective technique for delivery of story.
In particular, when an artist develops his own new technique, people of the world recognize him as "an original artist', However, it takes a great deal of time to develop one's own new technique, so artists devote themselves to create their own original technique for all their lives.
The stories that artists want to tell haue largely changed in accordance with history: stories about god, hero, king or Sense of value of a group. Nowadays artists mainly deal with stories about themselves.
So the topic is very subjective. Fortunately, since technique for delivery of story has been so well-developed that any private story can be delivered in some degree. Critics call such recent art trend as "post modernism".
Yoon-kyung Cho tells about herself through cats. She tells the experience of a woman in her early thirties. Shall we listen to what she says?
Her life was average and all smooth sailing. She had a happy childhood in affluent circumstances, and proceeded to College and graduate school of fine arts in which she Gould develop her talent and spend her school days as she wanted. She is a woman of decent appearance as she deserves to be
a beauty queen in a blind date. Judging from such her formal conditions, it is difficult to find out young artist's look fall of intense artistic anguish from Yoon-kyung Cho . So she says that she has been always dissatisfied with social prejudice, judging a person only by his or her formal conditions. In fact, if such a Standard is applied to judge Yoon-kyung Cho, it is easy to regard her as an artist who draws a picture for show, wandering about in the Apgujeong street.
What Yoon-kyung Cho wants to tell us is the prejudice formed by appearance-centric attitude.
It is the experience which she has obtained for 30 years of her life. Such an experience is the problem
to which women in her age agree, as well as her own story. Crimes caused by preconception and prejudice make a wide social ramification; they breed group polarization, black or white logic, uniformity, blind faith and distrust. All such problems arise from appearance-centric attitude.
Paintings embracing beautiful but heavy theme
Paintings by Yoon-kyung Cho are beautiful and lovely.They make us feel pleasantness.
However, such a technique is just a device to effectively deliver what she really wants to tell us.
In other words, it is a method to attract attention. It is a sugarcoated tablet which is made for easy ingestion of healthy drugs. For example, she used bright and brilliant-colored jewelry powder in her painting.
She criticizes the prejudice caused by appearance-centric attitude of our society from a pleasant perspective in her"Ego"series whose object is cat. Since she doesnt teil us heavy story seriously, she is very convincing in her paintings. She draws only silhouettes of cats which are alike in size and posture. She wants to make cynical marks an appearance-centric attitude of our society where onejudges from the other's appearance. The society formed by such social prejudice is an uniformized society full of black and white logic.
She delivers such a message through checkerboard-patterned background in her paintings.
Such a background looks like a geometric abstract screen divided into two parts: black and white. It creates a warlike atmosphere where there exist only two kinds of people: those who plag for my part and the rest of the people. It looks like our real society. In spite of serous and heavy theme, her painting looks like a fine art painting with excellent ornamentality: it is a strong point of Yoon-kyung Cho.
Though all her cats have a graceful posture, they are different from each other in mang characteristics including color and marking. lt delivers message as follows: even though some people have similar appearances and live in similar circumstances and conditions, their level of awareness and thoughts are different from each other. Yoon-kyung Cho says that the genuine Standard forjudging man is"the ego hidden in the inner world", without being aloud. Though it Sounds like a childish witticism of young artist, it is a commanding voice with obvious truth.
Her paintings are beautiful due to excellent ornamentality, but, at the saure time, embrace very serious contents; she expressed her own life in accordance with the sense of new generation. So people who are well acquainted with Yoon-kyung Cho say that her paintings are Yoon-kyung Cho -like" It is certain that she is a serious and intelligent artist who has the sense of language of this age.
/ Jun-yeup Chun