SingartThe “Flames” Of Yee Soo Kyung
Singapore has had wonderful opportunities to view Yee Soo Kyung’s works of art before: the Korean artist has been part of group exhibitions like the “Elephant Parade Singapore 2011”, Ion Art Gallery’s “Chopping Play: Korean Contemporary Art Now” (2011) and the recently ended Singapore Art Museum’s (SAM) “Collectors’ Show: The Weight of History”.
The popularity of her “Translated Vase” as the exhibit to include in the guided tours by SAM’s volunteer guides therefore, offered little surprise that Ota Fine Arts has also taken to showcase Yee’s first solo exhibition, “Flame”, in our little tropical island paradise. Here she philosophically contemplates the self and others.
Her time spent in deep thoughts about her “I” is completed quite literally: Yee expended long arduous hours on her knees painstakingly completing her cinnabar “Flame” drawings – so much so this tireless woman felt that she was bowed over in penitence or prayer as she generously but definitively plied the Korean soothsayers’ medium of drawing charms against nasty spirits onto her Korean paper.
This exploration of her spiritual self she extends to her “Flame Variation” scroll as well. Here her starting source of inspiration is the UNESCO World Heritage listed Goguryeo tomb paintings found in North Korea. These date back from 37 BCE to the 7th century CE and showed the daily life and Korean mythologies of the time.
That the source of inspiration and her self are poles apart manifests itself through her choice of iconography – a post-modern fusion of the eastern religions of the day with themes of Judea-Christian origins. The result is a somber work that is more like a Medieval morality painting.
Yet this painting spells her shift in focus from just herself to others: she, like so many Koreans today, has come to embrace Christianity too. And that transition to others is completed in the myriad of “Translated Vases” also displayed – all of almost every size and form.
These delectable variations are made possible as Yee goes through the ceramics villages throughout Korea sieving and collecting their discarded scattered fragments of earthenware – thrown away as they are flawed in the eyes of the master potters. These she dexterously glided together with fine 24 carat gold leaf – the “glue” of choice due to word play. ‘Gold’ and ‘cracks’ in Korean both sound like “guem”.
That Yee succeeds in gluing discarded shards of broken tradition-bound ceramics of every possible shape and size into fluid graceful contemporary sculptural montages reminds her of how her country men today have similarly achieved a Korean lifestyle that smoothly blends her country’s beloved ancient customs and way of life with the modern day’s man’s common sense.
To ponder on the contemporary artist’s thoughts on self and others more fully, view all her masterpieces at Ota Fine Arts Pte Ltd, 47 Malan Road, #01-23 Gillman Barracks, Singapore 109444. The exhibition ends on 15 June 2013.
