Our lives are shaped by endless cycles of assumptions and projections. These recurring images reappear in Leehaiminsun's work, transformed into new forms of energy. By dissolving these repetitions, assumptions, and projections, her paintings offer a renewed visual language that marks a subtle departure from her earlier practice.
One cannot help but wonder how much deeper the artist's gaze will become through her continuing relationship with nature. It would be tempting to conclude with a cathartic affirmation, carried by the strength of her contemplative vision. Yet, like the unseen summit that recurs throughout her paintings, I, too, will leave that culminating peak to the imagination.
What follows is a selection of five excerpts from Leehaiminsun's working notes. Together, they may offer a sufficiently rich reflection on the absent summit. Standing before these works in May, perhaps we, too, might become—as long as we remain with them—a weighty mass ourselves.
“1. A Landscape Without a Summit
There are edges, but not a peak.
It stands, yet seems to have no top.
It exists precariously, yet it does not disappear.
There is no summit, but there is a pose.
2. Peaks and the Analog
Within the painting are a mountain and a lump of clay placed on a table, sculpted in imitation of that mountain.
Yet this sculpted mass is itself a mountain with its summit cut away.
The sculpted form resembles the mountain as it appears within the rectangular frame visible to the viewer.
Whether the mountain in the painting is complete or only a fragment remains unknown, but the sculpted mass is not incomplete—it is a whole, complete form.
That mass possesses a summit.
An individual's creative world becomes an autonomous subject in itself, one that allows us to infer the archetypal world.
3. The backgrounds of my paintings are primarily landscapes in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, seen from the expressway connecting Seoul and Yongin. They are places marked by public-scale activity, like large construction sites.
The structures that appear before these landscapes, however, are plants tended by individuals in Seongsan-dong.
This juxtaposition was not intentional from the outset. As I began to read social narratives within these landscapes and returned to them in order to express those narratives, the backgrounds naturally became landscapes shaped by public forces.
Yongin is where I work as a temporary employee, while Seongsan-dong in Seoul is the neighborhood where I live.
In Seongsan-dong, there is a tree behind a commercial building wrapped in fruit-packaging foam and sealed with packing tape.
Beside a red brick house stands another tree, wrapped in white insulating foam that follows the contours of its branches, sealed with packing tape, tied with white string, and fastened to a nail driven into the wall.
On the roadside next to the same red brick house, a tree wrapped in black plastic is loosely tied to a folding chair with yellow rope.
At the end of that street, black awning fabric, faded sky-blue tarpaulin, bright blue tarpaulin that has not yet faded, transparent plastic sheeting, and wood-patterned vinyl flooring all tightly envelop trees, while bricks of various kinds rest at their bases as though reassuring them.
Outside Yeonnam Laundry, a tree is tied at a distance to an awning pole with blue plastic rope and an orange clothesline.
In front of Dr. Lim's butcher shop stands a tropical tree wrapped in translucent plastic and tightly wound with yellow packing tape.
All of these scenes remain unchanged, even as large commercial buildings in the neighborhood are demolished and replaced by new ones.
4. Yellow Vinyl Flooring
I often see wood-patterned vinyl flooring or yellow vinyl flooring, originally intended for domestic interiors, being used outdoors.
It is laid down, wrapped around things, or used as a cover, appearing to be only a temporary solution until something more permanent arrives.
Yet despite continual changes in the surrounding environment, it remains there for a surprisingly long time.
I painted a scene in which a sheet of yellow vinyl precariously covers a pool of unknown depth.
What was once flooring in someone's home now lies in the corner of a public space, coated with dust, faded by sunlight, weathered by wind, and aged to its fullest extent.
If the pool represents an unavoidable—or perhaps man-made—defect in the external world, then the vinyl flooring symbolizes an individual's internal resources.
It is through these personal resources that we temporarily compensate for the failures of the public world.
5. When I look at sand, I want to dilute the paint and apply it with tapping gestures. When I look at mud, I want to knead the paint and spread it across the surface.
Negotiating between these two impulses within a single painting—struggling with the paint itself—has constituted half of this body of work.
At the beginning of the process, works such as Yellow Vinyl Flooring placed greater emphasis on social narratives.
As the work progressed, however, the center of gravity gradually shifted toward what has always been the destination of my practice: materiality and archetypal form, and ultimately, existence itself.
After much deliberation, I decided to title this exhibition 《The Mass》.
(Five Excerpts from Leehaiminsun’s Working Notes)
