Fragmented Memory and the Establishment of Loss

SEOJUNG ART Senior Curator Yunjung Lee 

Black, a predominant color of Jungwon Phee’s practice, enveloping the main flow of space, serves as a device to unify the framework of all works, prompting a subjective interpretation. One cannot predict which individual elements will emerge as shapes representing the artist's life until they confront the layers of paint accumulating on the flat black gesso, devoid of any specific motif.

That which is individual changes over time and eventually perishes. It resembles not a layered record of life but rather a dispersal and fragmentation akin to emptiness. The artist, having had to encounter various environments with the shifting grounds of daily life, was compelled to preserve the essence of ‘self,’ the universal aspect, amidst all the changeable elements encountered. Those who have spent long periods in foreign lands may resonate with the recurring fragmentation and loss of memories, driving one to establish and fixate order within the accumulated dissonance of individual experiences. Jungwon Phee’s use of black acts as a framework leading serial interventions among numerous variables, enticing speculation about identity and encouraging imagination.

In Untitled: The Black Path (2019-), the obscurity that shrouds its form breeds an unnerving sensation, a representation of the ambiguous emotions tied to an unpredictable future, incessantly raising questions about the essence of a raw, more authentic self. The solvent applied later to the surface visualizes things such as the artist's memories, unconscious, and experiences, oscillating between harmony and contrast, ushering us into profound introspection.

Baudelaire articulated the duality of art as a synthesis of "the eternal" and "the fugitive," attributing this to the inherent autonomy of beauty and the artist’s imagination.[1] This dualistic perspective, commonly referred to as modernity, encompasses the notion that within any beauty that is "ephemeral, fugitive, or contingent," we must not lose sight of the 'essence' that we universally strive for, namely, "the eternal." As the artist’s gaze shifts towards external elements and focuses on forming connections with the world, the weighty atmosphere imparted by color and the yearning for the infinite, as well as the ascetic acts aimed at reaching spirituality, become more resolute. Considering the artist's other series such as Untitled: Future, Untitled: Line, and all other works, it is apparent that the canvas, steeped in darkness, is poised to assimilate individual elements, which explains its readiness. The geometric shapes that emerge as parts within the whole, and the power that fixes our gaze upon the black canvas surface, thereby maximizing a state of void, constantly prompt us to reflect on how the artwork was achieved amidst the tension between the heterogenous materials interspersed in the void and the smooth surface. Paradoxically, the antithetical nature that sustains a strong force while not converging into a unity, but rather accentuating each individuality, ironically draws the 'self' of the present back to the past.

What we must discern here is that it is not the black canvas, imbued with the artist’s Ego, that captivates our gaze, but rather the layers of paint accumulated upon it, the fluid nature of the large and small fissures and flows. This challenges the conventional belief that 'black' dominates vision. The imperfection that emerges from the solidity of the vertical form in the canvas's center sheds many expected elements of symbolic figures, thereby maximizing its mutable attributes. Furthermore, the canvas's surface, with its haphazardly multiplying lumps of paint and their resultant irregular contours, becomes a crossroads of personal and collective memory, a pivot point for new interpretations. The flowing forms consistently observed in 'Untitled: Crystal' represent the artist's attempt to conceal universality while revealing the intended subjects, a non-visual reproduction of experience. Yet, this representation is not the outcome of a deliberate dramatic transformation. The act of gathering the fragments of blended experiences and re-establishing them one by one constitutes the work. Hence, Phee is intent on embedding the act of recollecting the past within this process, striving to remember more, analyze, and willingly embrace the distorted reality.

The Transition from Utterance to Discourse

The fissures that form, the flowing properties within them, and the series of actions taken to preserve the liquid, visually represent the passage of time while simultaneously reproducing all of Phee’s contemplations and achievements. In such moments, when the canvas frame is surpassed and the boundaries with space dissolve, one can indirectly experience the aura reminiscent of the Lascaux cave paintings.[2] The space that exhibited the large-scale works, ‘Untitled:  Black Path’ series, becomes a sacred place of mystique, where the existence of 'I' intersects with the experiences of the other. In a space devoid of light, the artist’s black gesso erases boundaries, offering an experience akin to being enveloped by an infinite realm. Here, the spectator is encouraged to forget the 'self' and focus on pure discourse. In the silence of immersion, the outcome reliant on the subject's act of cognition manifests as a self-erasure, stepping into the world crafted by the artist.

Amidst firmness, vague shapes provoke endless imagination. The screen, cleaved into upper and lower symmetry with a transverse boundary in the middle, beneath which the contours of the unrestrictedly flowing paint directly engage the viewer's body in the act of seeing. Such abstract symbols that arrest the gaze of the spectators are designed to eschew concrete associations, instead drawing them deeper into the abysmal path of interpretation. The canvas ceases to be a mere structure, becoming an embrace of the other's being, and in doing so, exhibits the uncanny (‘unheimlich’) feelings derived from the life's heft that one must abandon to spring into the convergence of space and artistic practice.

Within his work, Jungwon Phee’s identity remains understated, yet the subtle hand of an anonymous artist emerges distinctly through the chosen materials, techniques, and processes, sharing the essence of experience. This act of continuous self-affirmation becomes a psychological catalyst that is amplified when the audience encounters his work, engendering an act of utterance. The viewers, confronted with the artwork, find confluence through the visual manifestations of Untitled, where a fusion of absolute universality and documentation of individual forms is once again inverted by the viewers, forging a discourse. The completion of a deep interiority and the inception of discourse can be seen as a temporal and spatial crossroads where endings and beginnings occur simultaneously.