| Unique Admiration For The Native Beauty of Korea-Lee Koo-yeol | |
Unique Admiration For The Native Beauty of Korea Lee Koo-yeol Art Critic Oh Jee-Ho, an oil painter, who tried to portray the natural beauty of his homeland and its appealing mood of change since the 1930s with impressionistic bright colors and an aura of fresh air, once mentioned in his essay ‘Stoicism and Color’ his views on art. It is a well known fact that certain features of art are usually the result of the typical characteristics of the natural environment where it art is born. It is self-evident given that art always involves nature directly or indirectly. In art, especially, in paintings, the core factors that comprise a true artist are upbringing environment, naturalness in his or her style based on sensibility towards reality, artistic inclination, unrestricted imagination as a means to create a pure formative work and autonomy in choosing an artistic method. Even in abstract paintings, it requires specific imagination and a firm formative mind from the beginning. Unlike pure painting, an abstract painter takes out unnecessary natural or real appearance or discretionarily changes them for depiction. In any case, the abundant experience of nature and the depth of emotion basically play a key role in realizing creative painting. In other words, the will of every artist involves relentless struggle and challenge from his or her ego. This holds true with Lee; his forty-year strife for the pursuit of art is the result of inner urges. Scenic views and the natural beauty of his hometown Tongyoung, a beautiful port located on the southern coast of Korea have enriched Lee’s artistic sensibility and are vividly depicted in his landscape paintings since the 1980s. This was a rather natural manifestation of his artistic subconsciousness. Lee started painting as late as the mid-60s with nothing but his will and passion toward art. Until then, he was an ordinary middle school teacher, instructing others rather than painting. But he was born with artistic talent. Lee, in his mid-30s, set a goal to be accepted and specially chosen for the National Art Exhibition Gallery, which was the only effective way to debut in the authorized art arena at that time and mustered all his will and effort to realize that goal. Since then, he has been specially selected for the National Art Exhibition Gallery as many as six times since 1972 and was awarded a Culture and Tourism minister’s prize, finally placing him in an honored position of a recommended artist in 1980. This was the first step toward success in his long career as an artist. In his early years, Lee’s works were concentrated on still-life paintings. His subjects were ancient pots, traditional living instruments and furniture that are entities of the country’s history, culture and living. He was constant in his obsession and interest for the unique beauty of Korea. But the delineation never transgressed the boundary of a plain realistic method and objective description. Lee’s attitude toward art, where he pursued creative methods and formative creativity, significantly changed in the 1980s. He tried to adjust pure expressionistic feelings into a still-life painting method that depicts things clearly and realistically. For example, by precisely portraying a dry stalk of a sunflower with no petals in a large clay jar, he made an attempt to ruminate pure reason for history and life, while symbolizing the background as an abstract, unrealistic space in order to create a peculiar and mystic ambience. In his still-life paintings, sometimes fresh fruits and flowers of various kind and color are added to exhibit a sense of reality on the canvas. His works of altered still-life pictures, in parallel with unique, fantastic landscape paintings that were produced in seeking a new, individual art of drawing, represent his artistry in the 1980s. Lee’s landscape paintings show romantic, deep blue seas in Tongyoung and the surrounding archipelago that had stimulated his feelings of homesickness as he grew older, which were deep inside his mind ever since he left for Seoul in the 1970s. He also tried to portray the scenic view of various islands, small and large, with the artistic perspective of fantasy and affection. The beautiful scenery of his hometown and romantic mood demonstrated in his paintings of mountains, seas, skies, clouds, islands, horizons, ships, fishing villages, farmhouses, rice paddies, fields and woods were all melted in his work where he praised nature with fanciful variations of specific scenes with childlike colors. His unique inclination resulted in paintings full of delight and pleasant expressions. This can be translated into love and admiration for the natural environment of his hometown that is precious to him. His artistic career entered into a new phase in the 1990s when his work extended and progressed into a new stage of describing the true meaning of the country’s mountains and rivers as a whole and the living environment that surrounds the Korean people. It was a major step forward to the artistic goal of creativity as well as a new form of artistic passion. His remarkable passion is shown in the fact that all his drawings at that time were worked as a picture of exceptionally large size. A primary goal for an artist in his pursuit for creativity is to return to his real heart. In the case of Lee Han-Woo, he started from realism, a one dimensional perspective, trying to envision his creativity by the means of intentional simplification, variation, omission, abstraction, deliberation and finally, arrived at naturalism that is evidenced byhis humble love for land and country. Lee’s expressional will and desire boil down to the simple theme of “The Beautiful Land of Korea.” In the meantime he has transformed the true nature of the land, countryside, villages in mountains, rural houses, rice paddies, fields and landscapes into conception on his canvas, exposing his affection and admiration for them. He contours mountains, hills, villages, farmhouses, fields and trees of various kinds with brief and simplified black outline. His touch of color is plain but peculiar; flat and decorative colors that make localities stand out are added to main colors of blue, purple, yellow, brown, pale rose and reddish brown. His paintings are reminiscent of folk paintings of the Chosun Dynasty. All in all, it can be said the rebirth of paintings that depicts the unique traits of Korea. As Oh Jee-Ho (an oil painter) once pointed out, Lee’s originality and characteristics are a realization of formative creativity, resulting from an experienced imagination closely attached to natural environmental features. “The Beautiful Land of Korea” series is a culmination of his ultimate inner world. |
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| A World of Formative Beauty, Portraying National Sentiment-Oh Kwang-soo | |
A World of Formative Beauty, Portraying National Sentiment Oh Kwang-soo Curator of the National Museum of Contemporary Arts Looking back on the forty years of Lee Han-Woo’s career as a painter, there have been a few changes in his artistic direction. If we divide his whole career into several stages, the first ten- year period is from 1965 to 1975, the second phase of some five years from 1976 to the early 1980s and, finally, the third period from the early 1980s to the present. From 1965 to 1975, Lee stuck to academic inclination as most of his efforts were made for successful acceptance to the National Art Exhibition Gallery. This period can be called his fledgling phase as a painter. This is proven by the fact that he finally rose to the position of a recommended artist after his painting was repeatedly accepted and specially chosen for the gallery. At that time, he focused on depicting still life as a subject. For example, antique wooden and earthenware, still-life paintings of ordinary objects like fruits, vegetables, books and a vase full of flowers were among his early works. In addition to these pieces, there are still-life paintings of an ancient pot (from the Shilla era), a dried sunflower and abstract pictures with an arabesque pattern background. These paintings connote a dry and peculiar nuance as they represent both Lee’s recollection style taste and a sense of incompatibility, caused by confrontation with foreign subjects. Ancient pots from the Shilla era and wood from the Chosun Dynasty being at the center, peripheral modern materials are enough to trigger visual tension. Hence, the co-existence of the past and present. Lee’s perspective on a subject is starkly intense. This often enables the subject to expose its material value. For a while similar works motivated by ancient ware were presented to the National Art Exhibition Gallery from time to time. On the whole, a prevailing feature of those paintings was a retrospective taste that stimulates long forgotten feelings for the past. Past relics as material for a still-life painting have their own charm in aiming for perfection. This indulgence in the material itself inspired production of work. This holds true to Lee’s early paintings. Lee, however, is differentiated from his contemporaries in the fact that his inclination toward the pastdoes not end as a temporary tool but continues throughout his work. Lee’s penchant for the past, which is apparent in his recent paintings, had already been sown in his early career. In his second phase during the 1970s, Lee tried a new formative method of viewing things from a dream perspective. Instead of detailed depiction, he presented nature as a large mass, describing it with luxurious and profound colors. His interest also turned from still life to natural scenery. His scenery is categorized into coastal and rural landscape. Lee’s paintings of that time display a peaceful sight with mountains, fields and villages, however, they seem rather phantasmal and dream-like, not real. Mountains, trees and fields are similar to fleecy clouds or a cluster of clouds. The curved surface that is softly bent like a mollusk continuously creates a certain image. This is a scene motivated by reality but involves the sight of a dream or Nirvana, as the author is viewing reality through the channel of a dream. It is the outcome of Lee’s unique consciousness, trying to replace reality with a dream. While most surrealistic methods are uncanny and gloomy, Lee’s paintings are bright and cheerful. Dynamic lines and pompous colors evoke a dreamy ambience on the entire canvas. What is the reason behind this bright and optimistic dreamy scenery? It seems that it is closely related to Lee’s origins. He was born in Tongyoung, on the southern coast of Korea, which boasts scenic coasts and beautiful islands and ships. While viewing Lee’s fantastic picture, a viewer could have the illusion of standing off the beautiful coast of Tongyoung. The bright and profound colors in his paintings are based on the colors of the sky there. Generally, an artist is largely affected by the surroundings of where he or she is raised. In particular, an environment with abundant natural conditions forms intimate and friendly relations with man. A man appreciates the nature’s benefits and sings a song about it. Leaving aside Bringer’s assertion, the bright and luxuriousness that artists from the south of Korea have, are the outcome of the affluent benefits offered by Mother Nature. Tongyoung is one of the purest and cleanest sea areas on the southern coast and has no match in terms of natural conditions. It is no coincidence that so many artists were born in this city. Apparently, the wonders of nature such as the sea, lakes, an indented coastline and endless small islands have been embodied in local people’s minds and inspired numerous artistic works. Lee Han-Woo’s third stage work (early 1980s) show yet another difference compared with pieces from the second stage of his artistic career. His subjects are still coastlines and rural villages. However, unlike his second phase when landscapes had hints of dreams and fantasies, his works after 1980s exhibit the definitive contours of subjects with a bold black line. In other words, contrary to the previous paintings that distinguished subjects with colors and without outline, every object is differentiated with a line. It is scenery with specific figures rather than a dreamy sight. Thick and black contours seem distinct and powerful such as a blood vessel or a wrinkle. This is reminiscent of xylographic art, vivid and sharp as if carving an image with a chisel. His 1980s works maintained extreme tension between a line and a subject, core elements for landscapes. In this era, he failed to harmonize a subject with a line as he regarded them as separate entities. This tense strain becomes complementary and cooperative in relation to work in the 1990s. Understanding a subject by using a line is usually seen in oriental paintings. In contrast to occidental paintings that bring out lines by overlapping colors, oriental paintings start with a line and end with one. In a particular field of oriental painting, an object is considered as a wrinkle. This is why oriental paintings are dubbed as the art of a line. In here, a line is no longer a means to draw a simple outline but ways to grasp the true essence of a figure. A wrinkle is a method to trigger a cubic effect, not a boundary. While western paintings portray a solid body of a substance with light and shade, oriental paintings allude to light and darkness by bold and fine lines. As we can see, this particular method of painting is a core element in understanding the essence of a subject rather than a simple touch or another way of lineal description. Lee’s depiction of objects using lines, however, cannot be directly compared to the above-mentioned method. Even though, for him a line is truly a key element in expressing the true meaning of a subject, it also represents a contour as a means of a boundary. An object is distinguished with a line. And whatever scenic view the object harbors, it comes to us as a part of arabesque structure of lines. The composition of densely woven lines makes an impression of a palpitating blood vessel in nature. While it looks calm and peaceful on the surface like blood that runs through a vessel, the active movement of a line is enough to visualize liveliness. Lee’s bold and strong lines have transformed to fine and minute ones in 1990s. Lee began to draw grandiose landscapes in a large-scale canvas in late 1990s. He no longer paid attention to sectional scenery but a view stretching away like a folding screen. There was no focus in his painting. Its composition did not attract the eyes of a viewer to a certain point. A visual point naturally shifts when seeing landscape. This is the so-called uniformity effect. This uniform visual point blurs the boundary between far and near views, which is differentiated by color. The distinction between distant and close-up views is only recognized by the size of an object. Generally, the bottom of a canvas is chosen for a near view and the top is for a distant view. You can only have a birdeye’s view of scenery at a high location. In addition, a steep view, looking up or looking down, has intense tension due to its drastic variations while horizontal perspective gives more comfort to a viewer. Lee’s painting is a case in point: it is cozy and comfortable. The retained image after seeing Lee’s paintings is something to do with hometown scenery that we are used to. Imagine a man, returning from a long journey to his home. He stands on a hill and views familiar villages and fields from a distance. Nothing can be compared to his joy on seeing his home again, something that he had long dreamt for. There stands a zelkova tree somewhere around the entrance to the village, over the tree is a neighbor’s house and in front of it are golden rice paddies, leading to his house. Several villagers are plowing in the field and in someone’s backyard a number of people and chickens peacefully idle about. He is standing at a stone’s throw, as if they could hear him when he shouts. Suppressing his desire to rush home, the man wants to relish the sight as long as he can. And he would cherish thoughts of the past as he follows his eyes. This is his long cherished home that he had never forgotten even in his dreams. Lee’s large-scale works are reminiscent of our hometown. Those sights are so precious because they no longer exist and only linger in our memory. In the end, this rapid progress that is taking place around us would destroy our mountains and rivers where we were born and raised over night. The reason why Lee’s paintings make an unforgettable impression on their viewers is that, through his work, Lee keeps our homes from vanishing from our memory. Our hometown is being destroyed in the name of development and progress. But we can see our home again in Lee’s canvas, something, which we have long yearned for. It is the untainted image of our home that we have in our memory. Viewers are also moved by Lee’s peculiar visual method even though he uses foreign materials for painting. Although his paintings are categorized as western painting, only its materials belong to the West as their embedded emotion and method are affiliated with typical Korean sentiment and ways. Localization of a western painting has been studied and tried in various aspects, but, in my humble thinking, Lee’s works are the culmination of series of these attempts. |
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| The Identity of Korean Art, Globalization-Patric de la Perriere | |
The Identity of Korean Art, Globalization Patric de la Perriere Art Critic I first saw the significance of artist Lee Han Woo’s talent in Korea. It’s already several years ago. In 2001 at Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, the artist presented impressive arts called Korean landscape wall painting that was huge in size, large enough to cover the four walls of the gallery. I still remember the audiences exclaiming amazed before such impressive scene. At the moment I realized I was with a great man and have never doubted that watching through his career. Lee Han Woo is well known in France. He’s participated in the Salon exhibitions various times and had private shows at famous galleries in Paris. Each exhibition was filled with audiences who were looking at the arts amazed and moved, recognizing his strong characteristic and potential. The last time he appeared in Paris was his peak as an artist. As you may have guessed, the special exhibition in 2005 that took place at Musee de l’Orangerie in Luxemburg palace in accordance of the invitation of the French senate The style of Lee Han Woo looks like a dyeing of beautiful oriental poem. His works looks like they are done by Van Gough inspired by oriental art. He reflected ‘Sprig of Flowering Almond in a Glass’ like a mirror and expressed in his very own way. I feel like his works are answering as follows. His efforts to discover simple lines and his uniqueness barely shares common ground with other artists have made this Korean artist one of the representatives of his nation. Lee Han Woo was born in Tongyeong located at the southern end of Korea surrounded by islands with mysterious lights, and he has reflected his memories there in his magnificent and special screens. And this was carried in the artist’s serious and sincere point of view in the direction of pursuing simple beauty and creativity. The artist supplemented traditional artistic senses of both Korea and France in great harmony and sublimed it into art of much abundance. In fact, the two countries have maintained deep, impressive, wise, and amiable relationship for last 120 years. In his works, he recognizes fundamental values his own and respects other big cultures and customs at the same time. He shows strong personality in every side and keeps consistent with his own balanced attitude. At the starting stage of his paintings, he drew objects in nostalgia in a very academic style, and this period started with his preparation for ‘The Korea National Art Contest’, where he was awarded several times. This period can be called as the time patched with his craze in art and ambition, or a learning stage. At the end of 1970 he reached a new recognition, and since then, he mainly has painted landscape with phantasmal hinge rather than realistic, as his new approach to future. He captured landscape of farming and fishing villages and put in a time-frozen screen silently. Since that point of time, he let his imagination exceed his sense of reality, sank warm colors on the screen which mainly were brown, ocher, or red, and his deep bluish black lines, all together of which create a very peculiar world. Even though he was inspired by traditional beautify of ‘Korea the nation of silent morning,’ his works are changed into arbitrarily poetic descriptive style to even give out heroic vibe. At the same time they make us feel like facing 18th century oriental folding screen, they also remind us of wall paint-like screen invented by Claude Monet, who is represented by the lotus flower blooming like fog and many semi-abstract arts of his. In fact, we can take a walk along his descriptive world, which often is longer than tens of meters, and enjoy the treelined road filled with purple and pink flowers in their full bloom with round line of a hillside looking like an infinite space. Sometimes he paints symbolic animals in his screens, and they remind me of the delicacy of embroidery on traditional silk. Swans, butterflies, deer, antelopes, turtles, Firefox, and other unnamed birds run among geometric motives of plants in sophisticated, perfect posture. Lee Han Woo presents his audience an intense feeling like that in front of a huge wall paint, and his choices escape walls surrounding the imaginative world. These methods invented by the artist were reflected in his screens to enable us to understand the artist’s immense span of vocabularies as well as visual and sensual sensation. The black bordering lines remind me of stained glasses of cathedrals, wiping our prejudices away. The permanent bordering lines construct certain mood of the colors, and invigorate the pieces like a stream running among fields and flowers. Lee Han Woo takes this meaningful method onto pieces like ‘Mont Saint Michel’ and ‘Notre-Dame de Paris’ or porcelains in more realistic way. These basic traces are expressed as endless dimensions. Every art subject dealt by him keeps distance between what is seen and the reality. The artist takes total control of his art, escapes from the danger of leaving the audiences with excessive thoughts, freely releases his art style and poetic abstractionism that derives from his flexible thinking, and brings settlement of time into modern art world. Following an artist walking a lonely path in the paintings world is like making a religious pilgrimage looking for ever flowing source of living water, and also, is a process of combining the artist’s value of soul and passion and putting a fire in our senses and emotions. |
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| Lee, Han-Woo’s Artwork-Tadeusz Lapinski | |
Lee, Han-Woo’s Artwork Tadeusz Lapinski Professor of Art University of Maryland The works of art created by Lee Han Woo represent high level not only of the imagination but also incredible craftsmanship far beyond reality. The Korean landscapes with their abundance of natural beauty and rich picturesque expression of Korean land and landscape are inviting to see and visit. I had an opportunity to meet with Han Woo during the opening of the Peace: A Four-Artist Invitational Exhibit in the Korean Cultural Center in Washington D.C. and he was very friendly and in a short time he told me about his resources and technique. I regard him as an innovator not only in the traditional meaning but representing a new esthetic that is inviting to see details of his paintings and to enjoy them like reading a beautifully illustrated book. Regarding his style, I found it particularly interesting that the source of his inspiration is the natural beauty of Korea and Korean lifestyle represented brilliantly through his mosaic-like patterns of landscapes that are carefully contoured and expressed with intensive color. Artistically, I consider not only personal approach in his paintings but universal innovation that is oriental in its nature, different from Chinese or Japanese art. Contemporary artists may view Han Woo’s artwork as original and authentic. His representational vision and expressionistic techniques are distinctive of art of Europe or other countries. I feel that Korean artists are dynamic, imaginative, and spirited. I realize that their style is different from western art and believe that publishing Korean art and exhibiting in the western world will be very valuable for expanding knowledge about the original and technique of such an important artist as Lee Han Woo and other leading artists from Korea. |
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| Dialect of paintings awakens our cultural memes-Lee Eoryeong | |
Dialect of paintings awakens our cultural memes Lee Eoryeong Former Minister of Culture When I’m faced with pictures of Lee Han Woo, I feel a buzz in my blood. I guess it is because the color of soil that awakes cultural meme deep down among Koreans dominates his arts. Old mountains and roads of Korea looked like that, and so did the colors of silk used at rituals. It doesn’t matter if it’s green or pink. All the colors appearing in the paint have more or less soil color and attract our hearts into the paintings. Like the pieces look soaked in ocher, our laughs and tears are mixed in his paintings. Not just Koreans. The very first painting of human race on the wall of a cave painted in the Old Stone Age consists of white, black, ocher, and brown. That’s because they used what were around them, stones and soil, as painting material. Not just that but other old wall paintings look the same. In that sense, the art of Lee Han Woo forms a global space of strong impression beyond Korea. The fact that he is a man of great renown in France proves that. Not just the color. His paintings remind me of my mother’s old weathering closet decorated with thin patches of a bull’s horn. Regardless of cross-patterns or stripes, his strokes are soft yet angular and delicate yet powerful, and have vitality of both sexes. They contain cultural meme of Korea’s unique lines. Not just the lines. The forms of objects are extremely simplified, close to a monad. Plants, houses, mountains, and people all are condensed into one cell. Like a bullet whose percussion cap was lifted, it gives out tension as if it is going to explode if I touch. At the same time, the flattened forms relax the audiences with their tranquilizing waves like that on the surface of sound water. However, what the artist draws is not the color, line, nor the form. He paints waves without painting water, smoothing breaths without leveling them, and grain of skin and heart without painting flesh and heart. Along the grains flow clouds, winds, and a very long time. It’s not life. It’s not landscape. He paints our life, the grain of our climate. Paints of artist Lee Han Woo are not standard language. They are like the humble languages spoken in my home town that makes a zing in my heart. When I stand before his painting, I hear a hum of conversation from somewhere. I hear the secret conversation in the daylight between a grandfather who passed away in the darkness and his unborn grandson, or the global dialect of mixture of sophisticated French and uncouth African Swahilian. |
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| A Landscape Harboring Divinity-Kim Yoon Soo | |
A Landscape Harboring Divinity Kim Yoon Soo President of the National Museum of Modern Art 70% of Korean territory consists of mountains. Where there are high mountains, rivers, and small and large fields, people have formed villages, harvested, and lived peacefully. This is a typical scene you can spot anywhere in the countryside of Korea, which was most popular subject of art in ancient days. Through modernization, it changed a great deal in its look, but to many city dwellers who came from the country, such image still gives nostalgia as an archetype. Lee Han Woo was born in Tongyeong, where you can look down the southern shore filled with small islands. From there are world’s famous composer Yun Yi sang, and many other artists. Lee Han Woo grew up watching scenes of mountains, ocean, and islands, and naturally they became principal motifs of his paintings. In the early stage, he drew delicate naturalistic paintings, while he took expressionist style with big strokes and intense colors in his middle stage of art. Finally, his work was added with depth as symbolist paintings. He expressed mountains, oceans, and islands as a spiritual world full of ether, that is, a phantasmal landscape of mountains hugging and protecting villages, and got inspired by la peinture folklore, from its images and colors. In the age of fusion, where all the cultures interchange, Lee Han Woo has been pursuing and developing Korean traditional emotions and ethos. The series of ‘Our beautiful country’ magnificently spreading on the screen is evaluated as a paintings that is the most Korean and the best representation of folkways. I sincerely hope this exhibition can provide France with an opportunity to comprehend a different culture, that is, Korean emotion, sense, and archetype, as well as for its success. |
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| La Geometrie Apprivoisee du Peintre Han-Woo, Lee-Marie-Christine Burguillo | |
La Geometrie Apprivoisee du Peintre Han-Woo, Lee Marie-Christine Burguillo Art Critic Le peintre Han-Woo, Lee nous fait découvrir ses quatre saisons à travers son œil cristallin, sa main qui ordonne l’espace et le choix de ses couleurs simultanément vives et apaisantes. Han-Woo, Lee n’a de cesse d’inclure la nature dans un espace géométrique. Ordonnant les arabesques inscrites dans les paysages dans une limite, un contour dont lui seul détermine les règles. Son œil englobe tout l’aspect du paysage, vallées, montagnes, plaines, champs, arbres, ruisseaux, ciel et terre et habitations avoisinantes. Les éléments de la Nature (branches des arbres, relief des montages, ruisseaux, chemins, plaines, fleuves, habitations alentours) lui permettent de dessiner cet espace géométrique nécessaire à apprivoiser et à ordonner la représentation du réel qu’il s’approprie de manière conceptuelle. Son geste picturale est structuré et nous donne à voir l’Unité. Il nous montre que et que chaque élément du paysage peut cohabiter en parfaite harmonie avec son environnement. Han-Woo, Lee fait preuve d’esprit d’ordonnancement. Il peint ces montagnes, ces champs, ces chemins et ces habitats avoisinants, en cernant les formes de manière identique. Cet effet de cloisonnement de la forme nous donne à voir un effet contraire qui est celui de l’unité. Il magnifie le sujet dans sa globalité en le cloisonnement, en le morcellement pour aboutir à une unité picturale. A cet effet d’unité, vient s’ajouter ses couleurs qui rend son oeuvre lumineuse et sereine. Aucune ombre ne plane dans cet univers rempli d’éclat de couleurs vives et joyeusement paisible, emprunte de tranquillité. Il crée des espaces de silences par des aplats dans le ciel et dans les fleuves pour donner encore plus de force a ses , très structurés. C’est ainsi qu’il donne naissance à son œuvre magistrale connue de nos jours et présentée à Paris au Sénat en 2005. Il marie avec dextérité le fond géométrique et la forme pour créer un comme il me plaît de le nommer. Lorqu’il ne traduit qu’une parcelle du paysage, il nous apparaît clairement que son œuvre devient totalement abstraite. C’est ainsi qu’il chemine entre l’art figuratif et l’art abstrait. Il fait cohabiter ces deux formes picturales (figuration et abstraction) dans une même toile. Du plus loin que je m’en souvienne, il me fait penser à la représentation des vitraux d’une cathédrale. A mon sens, il rend la place au sacrée dans l’acte de peindre et il rend la place sacrée à l’environnement naturel. Et surtout il nous rappelle dans son œuvre que la nature est sacrée quelque soit la force de la pensée conceptuelle. Il met en évidence la forme géométrique qui est inscrite dans la Nature et indissociable de celle-ci. Le peintre Han-Woo, Lee remet donc la Nature à sa juste place, celle de l’élément divin, indissociable de l’équilibre du corps et de l’esprit. Il réalise ce message essentiel avec brio et virtuosité, restant Maître du fond et de la forme, de la couleur et de la pensée. Monsieur Han-Woo, Lee est un grand peintre de la pensée. |
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ARTIST Criticism
