Critiques
“Paik's dynamic, unframed paintings are hung from the ceiling like sails and laid out under a plexiglass-covered floor, enveloping the viewer in an immersive other-worldly environment. The works are complex in color and texture and filled with motifs of light that seem to radiate from the canvases. Celestial and water imagery abound, as do recurring imagery of ships and architectural drawings of cathedral floor plans. Through the use of these images, Paik makes a connection between the world of experience and the world of the unknown while challenging our conventional notions of space and time…”
Ascending River SAN JOSE INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART
“It is perhaps important to remark here that Paik’s embrace of a more classically inspired compositional architecture in not to say that Paik never returned to the nocturnal palette with which she was so preoccupied during the years after her 1990 trip to India, only that she was able to embrace the full spectrum esthetic possibilities of that palette without dwelling too much on its obvious evocation of the fearful, that being the paralyzing condition of anxious dread that so preoccupied existential philosophers such as Soren Kierkegaard. For example, in the exceedingly large canvas titled City Awaken (2000), we see what appears to be a metropolitan area pictured at night from the vantage of a low – flying airplane, its undulating phosphorescent grid of white and yellow light forming the complex circuits that comprise the postmodern cityscape. Bright yellow shapes are collaged onto the surface of this work to create the illusion of some lights being much closer to th~ viewer’s position, reinforcing an effect that makes the painted lights seem to recede further away along a kind of electrified yellow brick road that moves away from the viewer’s position and toward an illuminated cloudscape. Here, we see a phatasmagoria that looks down on the world of the 21 st century interconnectedness with the same approving spirit that Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night regarded the 1889 heavens above the south of France. Indeed, from looking at this painting we can surmise it to be a vision reminding us that the world will be the world, and that the sun and the moon will continue to rise and fall with or without our worst fears or arrogant consent.”
Redemptive Rememberings: The Art of Younhee Paik
SOMA MARK VAN PROYEN WRITER, ART CRITIC, AND PROFESSOR OF ART HISTORY, PAINTING, AND DIGITAL MEDIA AT SAN FRANCISCO ART INSTITUTE
More Critiques
“Ascending To The Eighth Climate: A Note On Younhee Jung Paik’s Painting” Mark Von Proyen, 2019
“Allegorical Paintings by Younhee Chung Paik” Hong-Hee Kim, 2019
“Painting a Third Space” Suzette Min, 2018
“Tales of the Spirit: the Paintings of Younhee Paik” Eleanor Heartney, 2018
“Younhee Paik: An Introduction In Four Chapters” Mark Johnson, 2018
“Younhee Paik: On the Nature of Things” DeWitt Cheng, 2018
“Redemptive Remembering; Art of Younhee Paik” Mark Von Proyen, 2005
“Attending Universe” Robert Morgan, 2005
Not Available Jonathan Goodman, 2001
“Nocturnal Journeys” Eleanor Heartney, 1999
“Atmospheric Conditions: Recent Work by Younhee Paik” Bruce Nixon, 1999
“The Art of Younhee Paik” Philip E. Linhare, 1997
“Journey to the Unknown World” Mi-Suk Song, 1997
Not Available Cecile McCann, 1994
“Visionary Space of Another Realm” Kwangsoo Oh, 1994
Not Available Josine Ianco-Sterrels, 1991
“The Evolution of Younhee Paik’s Symbols and Work” Henry T. Hopkins, 1991
Not Available Kyung Sung Lee 1991
Not Available Betty Brown 1988
Not Available Fred Martin 1985
An Interview Excerpt: Eleanor Heartney Talks to Younhee Paik
Eleanor Heartney is a New York Art Critic and Contributing Editor to Art in America MOMA
YP: I have always enjoyed being outside, and when I was young I lived in a fishing village. It was the time of the Korean war and there were no toys, so I learned how to enjoy nature. The ocean was always my friends. I enjoyed being alone by the water. And I loved to stay awake at night. The stars were friends as well. Also, my father was a nature lover and he used to take me to the mountains.
EH: What about your use of light? In your paintings, light seems to come from behind, the canvas seem to glow as if it were lit from inside.
YP: My sense of light has changed since my trip to India. I lived in California for a long time-more than twenty years. California is a place of strong light and shadow. But in India I felt a different sense of culture spirituality. The light comes from within an object, not from outside it. In the cave temples you see light glow from the Buddha, and it seems to peaceful. So since then I have painted light that way, as if it were radiating from the object.
EH: Light also has a spiritual significance.
YP: Without darkness there is no light. So instead of starting with a white canvas, I start with a dark color and paint light onto the dark painting.
EH: Along with the natural references, you include man-made things like boats, architecture, and even diagrammatic lines. What is the relationship between man-made and natural elements in your work?
YP: Even though I appreciate the universe and am part of nature, I have to live in my reality. This place is my reality; this room is my reality; I’m living in a box. We are surrounded by geometry.
EH: Do you feel that man-made things hold you back?
YP: I want to participate in the universe, but I can’t erase my place in it. I can’t ignore my reality. The lines in my paintings make me think of constellations. For a long time I drew boats, and, of course, where boats go, stars follow. When I look at these paintings, I feel like I am under the constellations in a boat.