The “Essence of Nature” Portrayed In Art

2022 4-Artists Booth Special Exhibition

The Riverside Gallery announces a special booth exhibition, displaying artists’ individual artworks on the wall, by each artists – Tae Mo Yang, Woon Joo Park, Dae Sun Hwa Lee, Young Kyung Jeong. The exhibition will run from July 13th to July 21rd, 2022, with opening reception on the 16th from 5 to 7pm (Saturday).

All four artists make use of the imagery of nature to contemplate about the human perspective and condition, including the beautiful and the sublime, and the fantasy.

Works by Tae Mo Yang, Dae Sun Hwa Lee, and Woon Joo Park appear to make this association of nature through their use of curvilinear and organic forms. In Tae Mo Yang’s recent works, potential diversity started to appear in a form of color. The less noticeable but also important elements are included in the formative and ideological structures of his works. Tae Mo Yang’s paintings rely more on graphic lines (albeit their textured nature), while Dae Sun Hwa Lee is based on a buildup of painterly forms. Her work is piled up with countless strokes or paints. In the past, Dae Sun Hwa Lee emphasized the shape and image of the artwork. Recently, paintings have been transformed into old-fashioned forms that strongly appeal to visual and tactile textures.  Woon Joo Park’s acrylic and silkscreen works illustrate majestic trees that overlap to form abstract shapes and layers, and they represent breathing, as the lungs have similar internal structures called trachea. Woon Joo Park notes about nature as: “The trees that are always in my heart as they are indelible in my memory. As the emotions mature in the experience of life, they become pale silhouettes and come to the appearance of standing in layers.”

Nature also contains instances of the beauty and the sublime, which were thought to be the consonant (harmonious) and dissonant (disharmonious) aspects of our perception of nature. It was thought that people could overcome the dissonance of the sublime, which puts us at odd with nature, through the expression of freedom outside the laws of nature. Young Kyung Chung’s works appear to show this kind of investigation – the mixed media pieces made of a buildup of materials that also peel off of one another overcome their grotesque and dissonant nature by the elegant and harmonious expression of color.

Fantasy is a domain of thought and imagination that relates to the expression of human freedom; we take inspiration from and transcend the ordinary to imagine what could be a greater experience or to see what is forbidden and unknown. Young Kyung Jeong’s works often depict small, flatly-filled silhouettes of figures that occupy much larger structures of plants and flowers. They appear hoping to interact with the fairies and the bug creatures that inhabit these spaces of flowers and plants at night.

About the Artists:

“Night – Flower Series,” Taemo Yang

Yang, Tae Mo has a B.F.A in painting at Dankook University, a M.F.A Graduate School of Education.Dankook University, a Doctoral degree from Daiversity, and is a Professor at Dankook University. He has had a total of 26 solo exhibitions all around the world from (Die Wolfsburg) Germany to (Pleiades Gallery, Road Gallery) New York to (Song ǔn Gallery, Gallery SEAN, GanaInsa Art center) Seoul to (Pyongtaekho Artcamp, Pyongtaek Culture and Art center) Pyeongtaek to (Saraiva Gallery) France. He has won about 41 awards — Special Choice (2x) and Successful Competitor in The Grand Art Exhibition of Korea, Successful Competitor (2x) in The Grand Art Exhibition of Jungang, Grand Prize in The Grand Art Exhibition of Korea and Japan, Grand Prize, Special Choice (3x) and Successful Competitor (4x) in The Grand Art Exhibition of Sosaval, Special Choice (3x) Successful Competitor (5x) in The Grand Art Exhibition of Chungnam.

The “essence of nature” is portrayed in Yang Taemo’s art using a variety of media. It expands the boundary between the plane and the three-dimensional space and shapes them using the various media. The object works are presented on rough paper. His art is sophisticated and delicate. It provides as a guide to the mysterious world of beauty where roughness and delicacy coexist.

“Story of Forest 21-2,” Woon Joo Park. 24×24 inches, acrylic & silkscreen

Woon Joo Park received her BFA and MFA in painting from the Ewha Womans University and has had 9 solo exhibitions. She also participated in 20 art fairs, including KIAF and Busan. Park also participated in the Busan International Environment Art Festival and Korea Fine Arts Exchange Association, Korea-Germany Cultural Exchange Exhibition. Furthermore she has shown her works at the Seoul Contemporary Art Exhibition in Sydney. She is a member of the Korea Fine Arts Association, the Seoul Fine Arts Association, Ewha Painting Association, and the Gap-Ja Fine Art Association.

Forest Road by Lee Dae Sun Hwa. 20x20 inches, mixed media, 2021

Lee, Dae Sun Hwa received her Ph.D. in color from the PIC University in the USA and post-graduated in oil painting at the Duksung University. She has had 26 private exhibitions including in LA and Seoul and Daejeon (Korea). She also participated in 2-persons exhibitions two times and participated in international art fairs over 30 times, in Melbourne (Australia), London, Brussels, Paris, Miami (USA), Sinagpore, Malaysia, and so on. She also participated in art fairs in Korea, including Seoul, Busan, Daejon, and Gwangju. She exhibited in more than 700 group shows, including the Environment Project (‘The pig left’), Integration and Unity in 2019, and Pyeongchang Olympics Closing Festival in 2018. Lee currently serves as an advisory board member in art at Carnegie Lee Foundation, Director of Korean Art Association, Full-time Artists’ Association, Gapja Artist Group, and Contemporary Artists Association.

Lee’s work notes: A change in my work began a few years ago. The nature inside me is not the nature or naturalism of the physical world, but the independence of the mind that is free and does so on its own and does not depend on anything, and the life that lives accordingly is nature itself (the philosophy of Laozi). The work of erasing the shape of this life and shaping abstraction as an inner structure began. Reproducing or shaping the image of nautre is not nature itself. Nature or any other image or shape is trying to find its truth. In this way, the form of nature’s image disappears, and new forms form a primitive simplicity of color through formative languages such as repeating colors and drawing, and free colors form harmony with dots and lines, and the texture is revealed as an abstract emotion.

Young Kyung Chung, 20x28in

Young Kyung Jeong attained her BFA in painting from the Ewha Womans University in 1977 and MA in painting from Chung Ang University in 1997. She has had five solo exhibitions, as well as participating in Nam-Song Art Fair, Chai Lim Exhibition, Seoul Contemporary Art Fair, Gap Ja Exhibition, Chengdu Biennal (China), and The Asian Spirit % Soul.

Young Kyung Jeong’s work notes: Human pains are stacked painful memories from the past. Past is the present, as well as the future. If past memoies are erased, then the future can be newly built. This is the story of a person who erased their memories and earned freedom. They erased their hometown and, even, their mother. All to keep living in this hard-boiled world.

Further Works: