MEDITATION AND PAINTING‥SUH KYOUNG JA’S ART
In the collective historical consciousness of the citizens of the ‘global village’ that this world has become, in Marshall McLuhan’s felicitous coinage, this word MEDITATION looms large somehow.
Indeed, not too long ago, Newsweek Magazine had a special issue devoted to covering the widespread social phenomena of ‘Meditation’ of all different stripes of East Asian or Indian origin, noticing that Zen practices were still spreading further and further amongst many millions of educated American and Western European people of ages.
Indeed, today, in our age, healing is the mantra: we need to heal schizophrenic souls of modern men and women, heal the broken balance of life world as well as the natural world of our environment.
Meditation is, therefore, also the Mantra of our Age, as it is the only healing path we have at our disposal now, healing what the pursuit of modernity as the West have understood and globalized as the only way to live a modern life worth living for any human beings.
It is for this very reason that when a body of exhibited works of painting is presented under the general thematic title of MEDITATION it catches our attention.
An art critic, writing about Suh Kyoung Ja’s painting, wrote that the preponderant use of BLUE of great CLARITY had to do with the artist’s aspiration for an Ideal World (presumably as in Platonic World of pure ideals or the World after transcending this (actual) world.
I believe that is contrary to the spirit of Meditation and also goes opposite to the Ancient East Asian conception of Art as a creative spiritual discipline, to whom their art-practice had no need for ‘transcendence’, preferring instead ‘immanence’. Then, does Suh Kyoung Ja insists on using Blue for nearly all her works that has to do with the subject matter of ‘meditation’?
Suh Kyoung Ja’s works are, like one, serene and yet delightful and rhythmic, and the tonality of utter clarity. But, then, how could her paintings not be, considering that they all exemplify the Calm State of Being, having achieved the state of myeongsang.
Then, one is freed from all kinds of worldly categorical pigeon-holing, emotional baggage, or intellectual prejudices. Therefore, it is right that her paintings are all of one tone in color, rhythm and overall compositional milieu–it is that of ‘dan’(談), the very quality all Ancient East Asian Artists pursued as the ultimate goal to achieve in their Art.
Dan is the tone of Myeongsang after having been CALMED (靜). And, Blue is the color of Myeongsang.
Suh Kyoung Ja’s Myeongsang series paintings are historically important at this particular time in Korean society, especially for Korean Art World for the following reasons. It is good to see there are artists like Suh Kyoung Ja who resolutely refuses to go along with the bogus trend of Western Avant-garde.
It is not smart to follow what is passing by and on its death bed; surely, to have taken up MYEONGSANG as her subject-matter of her artistic-act is a smart move, as it is to go along with the historical wave of the future –i.e., what is becoming.
It’s already been pointed out above that if there’s one word to characterize the artistic achievement of Suh Kyoung Ja, it is to have created the color tonality of her BLUE as well as the emotional tonality, which pervade through not only the entire painterly space-time of her canvas but in all her works, VERY EVEN.
Only in a state of Meditation, not while consciously meditating, can one empty his or her mind in the state of utter calmness, is this person capable to recognizing his or her true potential which has been there as latent forces.
It is to discover his or her own spiritual seed, as the lotus seed does, which then is his or her responsibility to nourish and bring to full blossom. Since each human person has his or her own uniquely configured latent potential force field, born hard-wired, as it were; each human person can only be unique.
Indeed, it is not just with human beings, but also with any every thing in this world that is all uniquely configured and has unique characteristics of some kind. Thus no two stones are the same, as a good stone cutter or sculptor is well aware. Well, what about a stone, any stone?
In conclusion, another aspect of Suh Kyoung Ja’s artistic achievement is to nudge people, her viewers, to take different attitudes towards any each thing-ly or non-thing-ly thing in the world from that objectified power relationship, pervasive in our technological modern civilization.
Instead, she tries to guide them to relate to each thing-ly thing as well as each non-thingly-thing in a mutually respectful and concerned relationship, respecting the integrity and autonomy of each thing for its own materially and/spiritually configured specificities, held tightly as its latent potential force.
Suh Kyoung Ja does it by showing things, however tiny and ordinary, whether it’s a stray fallen leave or a stem of flower, as they contentedly ride on the cosmic waves that never stop to constantly swirl, vibrate, undulate and spreads out and in, as the ocean waves do.
It is for all these reasons that Suh Kyoung Ja’s works belong to what is becoming, what is demanded by the Spirit of Our Age, while what are today most fashionable among the posturing avant-garde art crowds of Paris, New York and London are merely the part of what is passing away, what is dying, in spite of their loud self-congratulatory partying.
△A writer/Ph. D. of Philosophy. Kai Hong