A concise explanation of the well-known “Yoo Seungho code” might be as follows.
 
The completion of form through the totality of letters; the reconstruction of pictorial ontology through surfaces composed of dispersed dots; a quasi–East Asian painting sensibility with an antiquated aesthetic; and the emotional impact that arises when the (viewer) infers the labor-intensive pointillist process that makes all this possible. To describe Yoo Seungho’s artistic trajectory in its distinctiveness, it could perhaps be condensed in this way. A rain of syllables pouring down across the canvas. At times, even the onomatopoeic word “usu-su,” which mimics the falling rain, has appeared as a motif within his work.
 
Ultimately, while remaining close to an extension of his earlier representative works—completed through the accumulation of syllables and dots—this text attempts to reconsider certain changes that occurred around 2010, as well as to reorganize the key terms used to describe Yoo Seungho.
 
Fundamentally, the intervention of storytelling—an attribute of time-based art—into the traditionally spatial domain of visual art has become an unavoidable condition of the contemporary art scene. While some storytelling-driven works have achieved success, many also induce viewer fatigue due to overly ambitious themes, or remain self-sufficient and closed in their results. The tendency among certain artists and critics toward excessive thematic ambition and a desire for storytelling often leads to theoretical excess—and this is precisely the situation today.

In contrast to such prevailing trends (of excessive themes and theoretical overproduction), the “textualism” in Yoo Seungho’s painting—extending from dots to syllables, to words, and to sentences—progresses toward a deferral of meaning, a deliberate exclusion of unnecessary theory, and ultimately even a denial of the inherent meaning that text itself produces. Although he employs text, which is inherently a product of meaning, he restricts its function solely to that of a medium for visual play.


Concept sheet of We Should Just Flash Together © Yoo Seungho

In Yoo Seungho’s work, a trivial sign throws out a cue, which then catches onto the tail of another, unfolding into an endless play of word association and ultimately culminating in a grand, nonsensical narrative. This chain-like structure achieves the pleasure of a domino effect through the “meaningless collaboration” of text and image. In Jeff Wall (concept sheet), the name of photographer Jeff Wall, written in English, undergoes repeated transformations—into “male genitalia → fire (火) → ♨ → atomic bomb mushroom cloud → erect male genitalia → traditional house → dolmen → sprout → petal → and finally the Korean national flag.”

This sequence borrows from the innocent game of chaining words together, reconstructing it as a chain of analogous forms. Such a method—where unrelated terms or forms continuously transform in sequence—is also the fundamental structure of Yoo Seungho’s work, where an inexplicable image emerges from a rain of cascading letters. It appeals to a shared sense of primitive play and intuition; rather than feeling deceived by the production of nonsensical meaning, the viewer experiences a sense of resonance.
 
The process of transformation in these forms involves presenting something that resembles the previous element, placed in succession. In addition to this method, homonyms may be introduced, or forms and signs that share certain characteristics are arranged before and after one another. We Should Just Flash Together (concept sheet) (2010) shows a sequence that begins with a small dot and eventually becomes the German flag. Along the way, the image of a sick dog is carried over through the grammatically incorrect English phrase “dog ill,” and from there cleverly linked to a European national flag through phonetic similarity.

Meanwhile, the grouped sequence of “♡, male genitalia, and 女” results from continuous transformation of forms, yet it is immediately apparent to the viewer that these three signs are closely related. In this way, when Yoo Seungho transforms a word or form into something else, the resulting connection may appear plausible in some works, while in others it may be entirely arbitrary. Regardless of the artist’s intention, this can also be read as a kind of disillusionment with the prevailing tendency of visual art toward excess in meaning and theory.
 
If the artist does not in fact hold such an intention (and I would assume he does not), then Yoo Seungho—who has explored the possibilities of pictorial composition through pointillism—can be understood as placing aesthetic emphasis on “painting without a predetermined theme—at times, painting as a kind of game.” The way in which words or sentences escape fixed meanings and become dismantled is not limited to specific works, but appears throughout his practice.

Consider the dispersed sentences formed by the accumulation of syllables across the canvas. One may approach closely and connect the syllables to “discover” a complete sentence. However, it is not necessary to reconstruct all such scattered sentences in this way. In Yoo Seungho’s work, words function as mediators that suggest meaning, but fundamentally, they remain nothing more than a sequence of signs that do not insist upon that meaning.


Yoo Seungho, Rear Window, 2009, Binocular, tripod, fishing line, plastic, acrylic, Dimensions variable © Yoo Seungho

The aesthetic tendency to defer fixed meaning also appears to be observable in installation works produced around 2010. Rear Window(2009) is designed so that the entire sentence cannot be grasped at a glance. In the process of adjusting the focus of binoculars, the sentence placed at a distance can only be partially “confirmed” in fragments.
 
As a work that adopts both the deferral of fixed meaning and the use of ambiguity, 뇌출혈 natural (2007-2009) serves as a fitting example. Between “cerebral hemorrhage” and the adjective “natural,” there is no shared meaning whatsoever aside from a similarity in sound. Relying on this slender thread of phonetic resemblance, “cerebral hemorrhage” and “natural” insert themselves seamlessly into a landscape rendered in a conceptual, literati-style manner.

A natural landscape is, in itself, a “natural scene,” and thus resonates with “natural,” while the faint, almost imperceptible cross-sectional images of the brain embedded within the composition connect to fMRI images of a brain affected by hemorrhage, thereby linking naturally to “cerebral hemorrhage.”
 
Because the canvas is not constrained by an overly burdensome theme, Yoo Seungho’s use of text as meaningless signs seems to extend easily beyond the pictorial plane. In the installation view of the exhibition 《Jin (to Advance). Tong (to Communicate). Contemporary Korean Art Since the 1990’s》 (2012) at the Gwangju Museum of Art, individual paintings with no apparent interconnection are hung across different parts of a long wall. The titles of each painting are handwritten by the artist around the works. Resembling the paintings that do not dwell on fixed meaning, these handwritten or drawn titles also function as independent signs, yet together contribute to occupying the entire wall as a unified field.


Yoo Seungho, 뇌출혈 natural, 2007-2009, India ink on paper, 200 x 182.5 cm © Yoo Seungho
References