Se Yeol Yoon

The title of the exhibition, Retrotopia, joins the prefix “retro-,” meaning a recollection of the past, with the root “topos,” indicating a place. In accordance, the artist’s works overlap recollections of the past with the landscape of the present. This strategy is immediately evident in Yoon’s use of traditional materials (i.e., ink and silk) to portray current motifs, but it also extends to the gaze within the overlapping landscape, which reveals the essential relationship between nature and humanity. Se Yeol Yoon’s paintings seem to show what contemporary society is losing by trying to juxtapose the typical urban landscape, embodying the frenzied rush toward industrialization, development, polarization, and population density, with the romantic world of nature, characterized by ample space, composure, and refinement. But is that really so? The artist depicts the city in extreme detail, almost to the level of a savant. These meticulous brushstrokes convey not only a critical perspective on contemporary society, but also a deep affection and attachment to the world where he lives.

In Landscape-River Wave, a literatus looks to be reciting a poem while traveling through time on a ferryboat. For him, the construction site in the background, where another new apartment complex is going up, is just another example of the ephemeral hustle and bustle of an era passing by. The artist’s definitive statement about the temporal scale might be Life Is a Merry-Go-Round, a painting that functions directly as a sign. On the endlessly circulating plateau of “now,” landscapes bloom in beautiful futility, as here and there merge and the past, present, and future become one.