Enough Somewhere in the Middle

Hwang Sue Youn _ Walker

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MARCH 2022

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Facing Kim Woo Young’s work, we happen to get lost at the border between planes and spaces, and wander around for a while. While groping our way through the work, expecting to find a door to enter, there flows a sound: stillness, the sound of absolute stillness. ​ The rectangular photograph of Soswaewon (the Garden of the Joseon Dynasty) forest unfolds a scroll of time, as if last night which sensed a harbinger of snow and tomorrow, which will calmly bear the weight of that snow, are no big deal. ​ While listening to the sound of absolute stillness, we hold a warm hand to which this rectangular photograph reaches out through incrementally accumulated time. Then we experience observing a moving forest rather than a still life, as the colors are revealed like the traces of ink painting beyond monochrome. Kim Woo Young does not take black and white photographs. Warmth, however, is conveyed through his achromatic work, and frigidity through his work in red. This is due to the constant endeavor of the artist who repeatedly recalls a time that does not exist, and ultimately expands momentariness to aeons. The Hanok is generous in the sense that it allows room for error. It seems to say that the way all life on earth lives is the same as itself, and to open up time and space for us. Likewise, Kim Woo Young’s Hanok holds a generosity to provide space to the observer through blankness. It seems that this blankness between the comfortable lines and the crude dots can be a place to rest or to fill in. And this door leads to contemplation and self-reflection. The red naked wood revealing the tree rings of compressed ages wears the rags of time over and over again. They are humming the oriental cycle of time; even if they die, they are not dead nor at their end. The lotus flower reveals its shy bosom with the glow of sunlight. As we follow the elegant diagonal line drawn by the stalk, the muddy fields, embracing a time that may be a hundred or a thousand years long approach us. The profound delight of the artist-who must have fathomed whether it was indeed a hundred or a thousand years while swallowing his breath-dances around the curve of the leaves. Kim Woo Young is a soul who greets trees and wonders how they are going. The pine trees with beautiful long lines seem to be standing somewhere on the hill. They do not reveal where the tops are. He must have looked up to see whether the unspoken words he released reached up there or not. The transparent sky that he gazes at through the trees is enough. Even if his words do not reach the tops, it is sufficient that they whirl around somewhere in the middle. ​ _