Installation view ©Whistle

The cards began to shuffle. It gently exposes the face above the hand as it inserts itself among the other cards. Finally, the softly curved card falls below the thumb, randomly tangles up, then fans out neatly. A fierce battle of wits begins in guessing the opponent’s hand. Many struggles with how to interpret Hejum Bä’s work. Is there a different meaning behind it? Perhaps it is because of the particular shape and intense color peeking through abstract forms and the unexpectedly more specific titles.

《COMBO》 is the third solo exhibition by the artist in 2021. Following 《Fyka Foretold…》 (2021, SeMA Storage) and 《PLOTLESS》 (2021, Kumho Museum), this exhibition deals with microscopic narratives of abstract reasoning that began with larger structures. Meanwhile, armed with mystery, the artist sought to explore the possibility of implicit communication with the viewer. However, 《COMBO》 gives a clearer view of Hejum Bä’s journey in pursuing structure as generated by the chain of abstraction and the artist’s unique process of constructing a pictorial ecosystem.

Hejum Bä has made various attempts to examine the relationship between shape and color within the painting and to realize the process of cogitation. It is not very meaningful to try to interpret the forms in Bä’s work. It is more efficient to appropriate the language of abstract painting to glimpse and infer the artist’s thinking structure. In the past, Bä deconstructed and recombined the “motile image” on the canvas to experiment with the motility within a painting and linked it to abstraction such as intense color relationships and language elements. Afterward, Bä introduced ‘unknowing’ and attempted to approach the structure generating from the chain of thoughts differently from traditional ideas.

The artist is a person who creates narratives in paintings. Bä introduced the plot concept and structuralized her work by connecting its past, present, and future. As if to imply intersecting temporality, the artist often duplicates and repeats icons from her work, interestingly sharing that, “[she] put a hyperlink in the title.” The same is true of the black dots that appear everywhere in the exhibition.

Installation view ©Whistle

The exhibition title 《COMBO》 is a word commercialized to recall a sense of continuous striking. Hejum Bä compares this word to the moment when various planes and colors bond on the canvas to reveal a form in sync with her thoughts. In other words, “COMBO” in this exhibition symbolizes the chain action of abstract painting. When an image appears from ‘None and Unknown’ and power struggles between form and color are combined or extinguished to create balance within the frame, meaning is generated from the remaining image. The title abbreviates this pleasure into one word.
 
The artist’s decision on the titling of each work is also an extension of abstraction. The title of the work is determined in its final process, reflecting the established content. In particular, among the two works representing in this exhibition, IN EQUILIBRIUM (2021) depicts elements naturally occurring inside the painting slowly coming into balance by grounding their positions, and COMBO (2021) most accurately demonstrates the situation where, as forms fragmentize, meaning is immediately acquired. With an impressive deep blue stroke Rolling Dice (2021) has a pink shape at the top of the work, a “trigger” for the entire painting. As it breaks, its forms pour down, speeding up the brush strokes to compose a new movement. Shuffling (2021) is a work that recalls a sense of direction when surfaces mix in hand. The artist shuffles a number of objects consisting of faces toward the person who is the object of confrontation. Viewers will get a glimpse at the deck of colors mixing randomly at the painter’s hand.

 

Soohyun Kim, Curator

References