Romantic Animal was created while thinking
about where to begin a painting. Over the past few years, I actively used oil
painting paper. Paper feels intimate and attractive to me, yet at the same time
burdensome like a patient. After finishing a painting, I always had to provide
a proper splint for paper that could not stand on its own. The paper I chose
for its lightness would, after the painting was finished, always become
unbearably heavy. In the case of large works, when transporting them, two
people had to hold the four corners together as if carrying them on a
stretcher.
Though I often complained about this aspect of paper, in truth I
secretly liked it. Through the series of processes that paper works entail, I
could feel more clearly than ever the beginning and completion of a painting. I
would unroll the paper, cut it, tape it to the wall, paint while reattaching it
if it fell, and after completion, make a panel identical to its shape. I spent
years considering which panel and how to attach it. As a result, painting
became material to me rather than image.
As I came to understand the materiality of paper in this way, I
became more clearly aware of what paper cannot do. When attempting work not
suited to paper, I decided to lean on fabric, which has a more flexible
materiality. When I first encountered oil painting as a student, I painted on
canvas that came pre-primed with gesso from the factory. Because of that, I
think I perceived that ground not as fabric but as “white.” At that time, my
waking hours began from the moment an image started upon that white. This time,
I wanted to see the process of a painting growing not from “white” but from
“fabric.” Therefore, I purchased fabrics finished at different stages and
worked from different starting points, trying to become familiar with the
materiality of fabric. After declaring quite a few works dead, I created Romantic
Animal.
Romantic Animal is a work in which the
state of fabric attached to the wall itself becomes the image. I closely
observed the folds formed around the points where tape fixed the fabric to the
wall, and the shadows created by those folds, bringing them into the painting
as elements. Seeing the thin plane barely attached to the wall, I came to
desire a solid framework that could support that plane, and naturally drew it.
The painting gradually grew into the form of a living being. The layers of the
painting were drawn in reverse order, from the outermost skin folds inward to
the internal organs. Because I thought this painting — revealing without
concealment the process of its own making and its interior — was itself
romantic, I titled it Romantic Animal. This exhibition
consists entirely of works created with the same attitude. The exhibition title
《Romantic Maxima》 is also
an incantation made to sustain this attitude.
