Kyung-Ryul Yang

Unseen Forces, 2020, oil on linen, 97 × 194 cm

Still, I See

Kyung-Ryul Yang

Kyung-Ryul Yang’s paintings are distinguished by intense colors and brushstrokes, along with a mode of composition or editing that integrates multiple scenes into a single image. His paintings, which can be well described as “expressive,” combine various images and incidents that he has personally seen or experienced, which might include a stage play (Unseen Forces and A Verbose Speaker); European cathedrals and streets (Two Landscape, The Spirit of the Age, Three Sisters, Dreaming of Moving, Tugging Man on the Street, and Tugging Men in the Light); ordinary indoor spaces (A Verbose Speaker); refugees on a battlefield (Three Sisters, Dreaming of Moving); a public square in Seoul and a childhood group photo (That Was Just the Beginning); a protest site (On the Street); or a natural landscape (Tugging Man on the Street). Summoned through memories or scrapbooks, these images are juxtaposed or divided upon the pictorial plane, sometimes even appearing upside-down.

A Verbose Speaker, 2020, oil on linen, 73 × 91 cm

Two Landscape, 2020, oil on linen, 72 × 72 cm

The Spirit of the Age, 2018, oil on linen, 91 × 91 cm

Empirically, when we see inverted images, we view them as reflections, as if we are looking at the surface of a lake, stream, or pool. In Kyung-Ryul Yang’s paintings, however, two very different images might be inverted from one another, without even the surface of the water dividing them. Even though the differences between the two images quickly become apparent, our mind still clings to the perception that they are reflections, enticing us to ponder the interrelationship between the two. The result is a type of schizophrenia, leading us to conclude that all events are cross-referential, that the world consists of every possible sentence, that everything exists on the reverse side of everything, etc…

Three Sisters, Dream of Moving, 2017, oil on linen, 200 × 200 cm

Tugging Man on the Street, 2012, oil on linen, 162 × 130 cm

Tugging Men in the Light, 2012, oil on linen, 162 × 130 cm

By suggesting the convergence of everything within a painting, Kyung-Ryul Yang revises the very essence of painting itself. For him, painting is merely a device for reducing events, images, and memories to color, brushstrokes, and application. The materiality of a painting serves as a medium through which viewers project their own physical and material presence. Viewers oscillate between two different perceptions, simultaneously regarding the characteristics of the paints on the canvas and the events that they represent. In painting, political, social, and historical events are continuously reinterpreted and newly appreciated through the physical aspects of the painting. Viewers are led to shuttle between two incompatible areas of perception, such as detail vs. context.

That Was Just the Beginning, 2018, oil on linen, 182 × 227 cm

On the Street, 2012, oil on linen, 146 × 112 cm

Yang’s pictorial thinking is exemplified in his small oil paintings, such as Landscape With Statues, Go Astray, Enjoy the Scenery, and Enjoy Comfort. In general, these works seem to have been painted very quickly, with free and spontaneous brushstrokes. Most viewers will not immediately realize that the titles seemingly refer to the feelings of the people inside the paintings, who have been reduced to rough blotches of paint. The discovery that a few dabs of colored substance represent a nude couple engaging in erotic activities immediately transforms the entire atmosphere and landscape of the work. The materiality of the painting and the context of the theme collide, acting as the two main forces that draw the fragmented world into an ostentatious process of identification through juxtaposition, reversal, concealment, and synthesis. The artist never stops planning to subsume the ever-changing world into a pictorial device through the process of “seeing, and seeing again, and still seeing.”

Artistic Director Jinsang Yoo

Landscape with Statues, 2020, oil on linen, 21 × 30 cm

Go Astray, 2020, oil on linen, 30 × 21 cm

Enjoy the Scenery, 2020, oil on linen, 30 × 21 cm

Enjoy Comfort, 2020, oil on linen, 21 × 30 cm

I Ask a Gray Dove, 2020, oil on paper, 34 × 42 cm

Looking at something is a story about the reverberation between the seeing subject and the seen object. The act of looking transmits a certain energy, and as we know, energy exists in the form of waves. Hence, energy exists as reverberation, and all of these reverberating energies attract each other. This is how we are able to see, feel, and recognize everything around us. Likewise, matter can define and prove itself through our gaze, that is, the energy of the observer. Matter is simplified by the viewer and finds its own modes of existence as both a mutual exchange of energies between the viewer and the viewed object and as a necessary condition by which each enables the other to exist. Kyung-Ryul Yang is an artist who deals with the relationship between two or more objects or substances with different characteristics. This mutual exchange of energy permeates every aspect of his painting, including looking, remembering, and thinking.

“All at once, I ask myself how I am doing” by Daesik Im (director of ARTERTAIN)

Self-Reflective Choice, 2013, oil on linen, 227 × 182 cm

Yang Kyungryul
b. 1978
Solo Exhibitions
2021 The Boundaries of the Times, Artertain, Seoul
2020 Two Landscapes, YELLOW SPACE, Yangpyeong Museum, Yangpyeong
Undefined Everydayness, Artertain, Seoul
2018 No, It’s Not Over, Youngeunmuseum, Gwangju
Like Plot Like a Narrative, Shinsegae Gallery, Gwangju
2017 Suddenly He Asks How I’m Doing, Artertain, Seoul
2015 Sculpture of Landscape, Unit One Gallery, Beijing
2013 Self-Reflective Choice, Artspace Hue, Paju
2006 Sehen, Alpha Eins Gallery, Hamburg
Selected Group Exhibitions
2021 Pink Monster, Forest Gallery, Seoul
April Affordable Art Festival, Choeunsuk Gallery, Seoul
2020 Youngeun Jigi: Connect the Memories, Youngeun Museum, Gwangju
Elective Affinity, Nomad Gallery, Yeosu
Golden Triangle, Artertain, Seoul
A New Worker, Ilmin Museum, Seoul
All the Drawings in the World, Artertain, Seoul
2019 Charity Bazaar, Space K, Gwacheon
The Most Beautiful Consumption, Artrium, Incheon
Samcheok: Three Different Eyes, Jeongna Port Small Museum of Art, Samcheok
Document, Yangpyeong Museum, Yangpyeong
Spring Day, G&J Gallery, Seoul
Empathy, Expo Gallery, Yeosu
Awards
2016 Shinsegae Arts Festival, Excellence Award, Gwangju Shinsegae Gallery
New Drawing Project, Yangju City Chang Ucchin Museum of Art
2015 Portfolio Fair, Excellence Award, Seoul Foundation for Arts & Culture
Residencies
2018 Youngeun Museum, Gwangju
2015 B-space, Beijing
2011-2014 Hue+Network Art Studio, Paju
Collections
Yangpyeong Museum of Art
Yangpyeong Cultural Foundation
MMCA Art Bank
Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art
Youngeun Museum
Chang Ucchin Museum of Art Yangju City
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Reversed Viewpoint: Visual Practice That Refelcts Back to Its Times
Byung Jic Min

All kinds of affairs seem to unfold on canvas: on top of mundane scenes from everyday life, we see scenes of plazas and streets in everyday life overlap with all sorts of art historical icons, including buildings and sculptures, and images, which create sights that we are accustomed to yet find unfamiliar. Otherwise, reversed scenes of worldly affairs are often reflected onto the screen as distorted images. At times the scenes from an upside-down world are warped as they are projected on the canvas so that the images of our kaleidoscopic times seem to be violently and carelessly captured, but paradoxically the diverse stories of our lives are depicted with subtlety. Like his contemporaries, Kyung-Ryul Yang does not turn a blind eye to the uncomfortable social reality of our times. But Yang’s works exude rather different feelings. He tries to depict uncertain and contradictory reality more vividly and realistically than his contemporaries. The world transferred onto canvas by the artist contains scenes that are distorted and ambiguous, but these scenes resemble our lives today. In this sense, it is not hard to understand what the artist means when he talks about expressionism. He is not merely presenting his artistic sentiments and feelings through direct internality but also revealing the world that he has thought of, sensed, and experienced firsthand—expressing the time the artist belongs to, or the spirit of the times—which can be viewed as expressionism in a different sense. However, it is impossible to transfer the totality of such a world onto canvas, that is, the contradictory and multi-faceted world in which different meanings and feelings clash. As such, Yang, as an artist, seems to have chosen such a method of expression to represent the multi-faceted world where different meanings and feelings collide.

This seems to be the point where the concept of reflexive choice unique to Yang originates. Reflexive choice is different from the concept of realism, which reflects reality as it is. The lexical meaning of reflection is a physical phenomenon in which waves moving in one direction strike the surface of another object and bounce off it to move in the opposite direction. Likewise, reflexive choice refers to global phenomena striking the artist, who in turn depicts them in a subjective way. Traces or marks of this subjective representation are transposed onto the canvas, which reflects the world once again. In that sense, collision and tension stand out, revealing a tense relationship with the world, changeable and fluid depending on the artist’s sensitivities and ideas. The choices made here are nothing less than traces of the artist’s (un)intentional and (sub)conscious views of the world, which have been formed, piling up on top of one after another under a countless number of tensions. During this process, subjects that imply the spirit of the times are bound to be captured inevitably by accident. That is why images are layered in the artist’s paintings, seemingly resulting from his artistic contemplation to capture the complicated and disparate affairs of the world and to depict their paradoxically contradictory and dynamic tensions on canvas. Hence, a variety of thoughts and sensory episodes occurring in the real world are endlessly piled up on the artist’s canvas. In all of temporal, spatial, vertical and horizontal aspects, such overlaps occur. Such overlaps can be interpreted not as a collision with the well-defined logic of the world or as conflicts between different values and meanings, but as the mixture or coexistence of diverse values and meanings. It is true that different matters clash with one another, creating tension. However, when different values and meanings quietly pile up one by one, viewers are given the opportunity or room to reflect on various aspects of life. This is possible because the artist shows consideration and respect for the world, instead of criticizing contradictory reality full of conflicting values and meanings.

It might be that my personal impressions of the artist have overlapped with my interpretation. As such, although Yang’s paintings seem to be filled with dynamic depictions of complicated secular affairs, they seem to have an exceptionally calm, slow, and profound resonance. It comes to me that the paintings possess a composed and subdued yet warm gaze and attitude, rather than a fierce outcry about the world. The artist captures multi-faceted scenes of his times in a frank and calm voice. It seems that Yang, as an artist, has been quietly recording the complex scenes of life and sights beneath the surface of the world, that is, subtle features of life in our time. However, for him, the dimension of the viewpoint and visual form might have been as important as the spirit of the times. That is why Yang, like his contemporaries, composes scenes on canvas imbued with personal experiences and memories, as well as materials collected from various media, including the Internet, and visual images that seem to be seen through the eye of a camera. Just as today’s visuality is a combination of naked eye and mechanical views, empirical memories and visual sights, and analog and digital sights, Yang has collected, disassembled, assembled, and reorganized images that contain contemporary visuality. By collecting, disassembling, assembling, and reorganizing those collected images and by contemplating on and representing a variety of visual forms, the artist probably came to perfect his own unique language, that is, the composition of a reversed canvas.

To represent worldly things that do not allow their entire appearance to be exposed as well as contradictory situations of the times characterized by atypicality, fluidity, and uncertainty, the artist has given shape to the dynamic reality of his times through his own painterly activity,, in which all things collide and coexist, by building up those traces of worldly affairs on top of each other, sometimes deflected, reflected, or reversed, to form true thickness and a sense of weight. In addition, by proposing visual possibilities that are equivalent to painterly activity, Yang continues to calmly depict all these things, ranging from what today’s visuality implicates to things that are stacked up as another practical power and influence often not noticeable and invisible, with his own unique techniques that are based on paradoxical sensibilities and ideas, or a reversed viewpoint.

Reversed Viewpoint: Visual Practice That Refelcts Back to Its Times
Byung Jic Min

All kinds of affairs seem to unfold on canvas: on top of mundane scenes from everyday life, we see scenes of plazas and streets in everyday life overlap with all sorts of art historical icons, including buildings and sculptures, and images, which create sights that we are accustomed to yet find unfamiliar. Otherwise, reversed scenes of worldly affairs are often reflected onto the screen as distorted images. At times the scenes from an upside-down world are warped as they are projected on the canvas so that the images of our kaleidoscopic times seem to be violently and carelessly captured, but paradoxically the diverse stories of our lives are depicted with subtlety. Like his contemporaries, Kyung-Ryul Yang does not turn a blind eye to the uncomfortable social reality of our times. But Yang’s works exude rather different feelings. He tries to depict uncertain and contradictory reality more vividly and realistically than his contemporaries. The world transferred onto canvas by the artist contains scenes that are distorted and ambiguous, but these scenes resemble our lives today. In this sense, it is not hard to understand what the artist means when he talks about expressionism. He is not merely presenting his artistic sentiments and feelings through direct internality but also revealing the world that he has thought of, sensed, and experienced firsthand—expressing the time the artist belongs to, or the spirit of the times—which can be viewed as expressionism in a different sense. However, it is impossible to transfer the totality of such a world onto canvas, that is, the contradictory and multi-faceted world in which different meanings and feelings clash. As such, Yang, as an artist, seems to have chosen such a method of expression to represent the multi-faceted world where different meanings and feelings collide.

This seems to be the point where the concept of reflexive choice unique to Yang originates. Reflexive choice is different from the concept of realism, which reflects reality as it is. The lexical meaning of reflection is a physical phenomenon in which waves moving in one direction strike the surface of another object and bounce off it to move in the opposite direction. Likewise, reflexive choice refers to global phenomena striking the artist, who in turn depicts them in a subjective way. Traces or marks of this subjective representation are transposed onto the canvas, which reflects the world once again. In that sense, collision and tension stand out, revealing a tense relationship with the world, changeable and fluid depending on the artist’s sensitivities and ideas. The choices made here are nothing less than traces of the artist’s (un)intentional and (sub)conscious views of the world, which have been formed, piling up on top of one after another under a countless number of tensions. During this process, subjects that imply the spirit of the times are bound to be captured inevitably by accident. That is why images are layered in the artist’s paintings, seemingly resulting from his artistic contemplation to capture the complicated and disparate affairs of the world and to depict their paradoxically contradictory and dynamic tensions on canvas. Hence, a variety of thoughts and sensory episodes occurring in the real world are endlessly piled up on the artist’s canvas. In all of temporal, spatial, vertical and horizontal aspects, such overlaps occur. Such overlaps can be interpreted not as a collision with the well-defined logic of the world or as conflicts between different values and meanings, but as the mixture or coexistence of diverse values and meanings. It is true that different matters clash with one another, creating tension. However, when different values and meanings quietly pile up one by one, viewers are given the opportunity or room to reflect on various aspects of life. This is possible because the artist shows consideration and respect for the world, instead of criticizing contradictory reality full of conflicting values and meanings.

It might be that my personal impressions of the artist have overlapped with my interpretation. As such, although Yang’s paintings seem to be filled with dynamic depictions of complicated secular affairs, they seem to have an exceptionally calm, slow, and profound resonance. It comes to me that the paintings possess a composed and subdued yet warm gaze and attitude, rather than a fierce outcry about the world. The artist captures multi-faceted scenes of his times in a frank and calm voice. It seems that Yang, as an artist, has been quietly recording the complex scenes of life and sights beneath the surface of the world, that is, subtle features of life in our time. However, for him, the dimension of the viewpoint and visual form might have been as important as the spirit of the times. That is why Yang, like his contemporaries, composes scenes on canvas imbued with personal experiences and memories, as well as materials collected from various media, including the Internet, and visual images that seem to be seen through the eye of a camera. Just as today’s visuality is a combination of naked eye and mechanical views, empirical memories and visual sights, and analog and digital sights, Yang has collected, disassembled, assembled, and reorganized images that contain contemporary visuality. By collecting, disassembling, assembling, and reorganizing those collected images and by contemplating on and representing a variety of visual forms, the artist probably came to perfect his own unique language, that is, the composition of a reversed canvas.

To represent worldly things that do not allow their entire appearance to be exposed as well as contradictory situations of the times characterized by atypicality, fluidity, and uncertainty, the artist has given shape to the dynamic reality of his times through his own painterly activity,, in which all things collide and coexist, by building up those traces of worldly affairs on top of each other, sometimes deflected, reflected, or reversed, to form true thickness and a sense of weight. In addition, by proposing visual possibilities that are equivalent to painterly activity, Yang continues to calmly depict all these things, ranging from what today’s visuality implicates to things that are stacked up as another practical power and influence often not noticeable and invisible, with his own unique techniques that are based on paradoxical sensibilities and ideas, or a reversed viewpoint.