CONFLUENCE: Jungwon Phee

Jungwon Phee expresses the hybrid of his experiences and emotions derived from those experiences by abstracting them in black on the canvas. Phee places his memories from his deep self in the cracks and curves of densely piled-up, black matière. Phee's first solo exhibition with Seojung Art examines the past and the present of his Untitled series, covering from its bedrock (After Image, 2017~) to the latest developments (Untitled: Black Path).

The rough and black space inside Jungwon Phee’s paintings is inspired by the cave. The cave is linked to personal memories of Phee's early days as a hideout while studying in Canada and the United States; it is also where he encountered the murals that later became his visual motif. Cave murals cannot exist without the accumulation of changes in time and space, and this mechanism has become a crucial element for the artist to visualize the accumulated experiences and emotions. Just as the huge cave paintings evince a vast passage of time, refined versions of the emotions and memories of Phee's experiences get transferred to the canvas like a chronicle. The vast plain of Phee's painting is composed of layers of energetic brushstrokes and darkness; the image appears when the synthesis–confluence–of intense cracks in his thick and atypical matière occur.

The influence of memories Jungwon Phee has accumulated while studying abroad is evident in the After Image(2017~) series. In After Image, Phee illustrates his childhood memories in a foreign country on a background painted with a mixture of black gesso, a material of western origin, and ink that symbolizes his national identity and nostalgia for his home country. What you see in the abstract realm of Phee's canvas is not a single expressive mass but individually transfigured images. This series is also in line with Untitled: Black Path which transforms his memories after 2020 into a single lump. Here, the rich cracks created by the mixture of cement and Galkyd fill the black background, maximizing the visual experience of his painting.

In ‘CONFLUENCE’, Phee showcases a large-scale series from Untitled: Black Path, the result of his research into ‘imaginable’ abstract experiences that go beyond the act of seeing and reach a point of empathy for emotions and memories. Inspired by the caves, the source of his early inspiration, the space where the presentation of this series takes place is dim. This captivating ambiance invites the viewers to take a closer look at every aspect of his work, which ultimately prepares them for a journey toward complete abstraction. Phee also exhibits an archive of his doodles, drawings, and sketches that traces the process and birth of his abstraction-in-black.

Phee translates his visual experience into abstraction on the canvas. As the created images unify, they become a force of expression. Finally, the abstraction reinterpreted in the formal language of Phee sparks a moment of confluence as it synthesizes with the audience's experience. And through this confluence, his work ultimately becomes a medium between the artist and the audience.