Installation view of 《Modulate》 (Perigee Gallery, 2020) ©Perigee Gallery

Whenever I write about painting, I find myself thinking that it is an attempt doomed to fail—and yet, inevitably, I catch myself attaching words to images once again. Writing about painting, to me, is not about confining the artwork within the boundaries of language but rather one of the ways I approach it, a part of the process of understanding. Thus, depending on who writes it, a text about painting inevitably yields diverse interpretations; sometimes, the writer’s own subjectivity becomes embedded within the words, revealing another world beyond the image itself.

Painting, by nature, is a visual manifestation of sensations and flows of consciousness that cannot be fully expressed in language—it is perhaps the most primal form of nonverbal language. For this reason, writing about painting occupies a paradoxical space: it can never stand entirely on its own, yet it often establishes a position that is most independent and self-sufficient. Personally, I find that the more abstract an image becomes, the greater the possibility that writing can stand on its own. This comes from my belief that, in the case of abstract imagery, interpretive authority rests with the viewer, allowing for a freer dialogue with the work.


Nakhee Sung, Polyphonic 5, 2016 ©Nakhee Sung

I have been in continuous conversation with the paintings of Nakhee Sung, who has persistently worked with abstract imagery. As I have followed the evolution of her practice over time, my perspective and interpretation have shifted as well. Much like getting to know a person, the more I became familiar with her work, the more multidimensional my understanding became—sometimes my preconceptions dissolved, while at other times, I found firmer grounds to solidify my interpretations.

In her works from the mid-2000s to around 2010, I found myself closely following the geometric forms that dominated her canvases, drawn by their rhythm and sense of movement, which evoked a musical sensibility. For this reason, I once referred to her works as “image music” when writing about the two-person exhibition 《Stuffs!》 (2012), which she held with her brother, artist Nakion (Sung Nakyoung).

Since the early 2000s, Sung had not only painted but also produced wall drawings, allowing her images to break free from the confines of the canvas and extend dynamically across the exhibition space’s walls and floors. Looking back, I wonder if the artist, in fear that the images she felt and wanted to express might fade, “performed” them as if playing music in a spontaneous surge of expression. Perhaps I, unable to keep pace with that rapid tempo, was preoccupied merely with reading the surface.

However, upon encountering her later series—‘Transpose’ (2018) and ‘Sequence’ (2019)—I began to think that her earlier works might have been preludes or guides leading toward these later developments.


Nakhee Sung, Frequency, 2006 ©Nakhee Sung

Overlapping Pasts

The ‘Transpose’ series represented a zoomed-in version of the spaces found in her earlier paintings. Revisiting her past works, Sung developed the ‘Transpose’ series in 2018, followed by the ‘Sequence’ series, which was presented in the 2020 exhibition 《Modulate》 at Perigee Gallery. The images on her canvases still carried a rhythmic sensibility, yet unlike before, that musical quality no longer skimmed swiftly across the surface. Instead, it lingered between the spaces within the composition, encouraging the viewer to pause or move in rhythm with the painter’s gestures and brushstrokes.

In the early ‘Transpose’ works, one could sense that certain shapes from her 2000s paintings had been enlarged, but the use of straight and curved lines appeared somewhat rigid. As the series progressed, however, her division and arrangement of space became bolder and freer, revealing her distinctive wit, unexpected color combinations, and the traces of her brushwork. Of course, there are exceptions—works such as Transpose 2, for instance, appear to compress spatial depth to an extreme (perhaps evolving from Amplitude 2, 2017). Yet unlike her earlier paintings that demanded the viewer’s eyes dart busily across the surface, these works allowed a slower engagement, revealing how delicately she calibrated every area of the canvas.

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