YOO – LUND
Yoo Hye-Sook breathes to the sound of a pencil that twists and turns on the canvas covered with a dense, matte black. No programme, no destination. The artist abandons herself to the gestures that place the
pigments on the canvas. Each line is a presence. Each line carries hope and expectation. Today is,tomorrow will certainly be.
The canvas becomes a wall. A vibration is created between the pigments on the surface and the darkness of the hollows, where the pencil does not penetrate. At first, you see almost nothing, you discern a glow, a slight halo perhaps, nuances of subtle tones. Then the senses awaken, they would like to grasp, to understand. Through contemplation, the perceptive capacities and the gaze sharpen and refine. In
hundreds, even thousands of lines, Yoo Hye-Sook gently awakens a presence. A murmured form, a halo, a shadow, an opening: a genesis that the attentive eye perceives without managing to embrace it. Blues, greens, purples, greys – the light brings forth and grows in these captivating apparitions that never reveal all of their secrets. Oceans, celestial spaces, architectures? Yoo Hye-Sook envelops the viewer in a night- time cape where the beginning of the day is breaking. Led to yield to our intuitions, everything within us
admits doubt. What will happen will happen. In a series of small drawings, Yoo Hye-Sook revisits the subject of the window or the frontal stage. The
writing is graphic. Is the point of view from the inside to the outside? Or the other way around? The lines are long, rapidly sketched in assertive colours.
Those who have experienced James Turell’s installations, where light without an identifiable source embodies the only reference point, will draw a parallel with Yoo Hye-Sook’s research. The artist does not
know any of these places-spaces and the important thing is not so much their identity. Her non-intentional universe is an invitation to surrender, to absorption, to impregnation. Its materiality links us to a space beyond the image, beyond time, beyond being. background
Yoo Hye-Sook was born in 1964 in the Republic of Korea. She has a degree in the Fine Arts (EWHA University
in Seoul, ENSBA in Paris and Paris VIII University). In 2000, her work was awarded the Salon de Montrouge
prize. For the past twenty years, the artist has exhibited in Europe and in Asia in several institutions: JMA
open air project, Un Milieu Sensible (creation of a three dimensional installation), Jeonbuk Museum of Art,
Wanju, 2022 – Sillages, Cheongju Museum of art, Cheongju, 2020 – Korean Modern and Contemporary
drawings, SOMA Museum of art – Towards an elsewhere, Daegu Art Factory, Daegu, 2020 – Seoul, 2019 – Autre
part, Ujong Museum, Boseong, 2019 – Youngeun Museum Contemporary of Art, Kwangju, 2016 – Séoul-Paris-
Séoul – Korean Figurations curated by the Musée Cernuschi, Paris, 2015 – Line by line, National Art Gallery of
Indonesia, Jakarta, 2009 – Contemporary Korean Artists in Paris Musée d’Art Hangaram, Seoul, 2009 – Micro-
Narratives, tentation des petites réalités, MAMC+ de Saint-Etienne Métropole, 2009.