Korean Art Support Project Season 12
Yong Hwan-cheon – Connection Between Myself and the World

[비즈한국] Season 12 of the 'Korean Art Support Project,' a program designed to cultivate fertile soil for Korean art, has begun. This project has now been recognized by the art world as a meaningful event for discovering and fostering artists. It has established a reputation among artists as a project they aspire to participate in. The fundamental keyword that the 'Korean Art Support Project' has pursued from the beginning is the "acceptance of diverse currents in Korean art and the pursuit of developmental change." As a result of these principles, it is credited with having established a perspective for viewing contemporary Korean art.

In painting, the meaning of space is paramount among all essential elements. This is because it involves translating three-dimensional reality onto a two-dimensional plane. Consequently, many painters have striven to interpret space in their own ways.

The meaning of space in painting became clearly defined when landscapes were adopted as subjects. In the case of Western art, various methods for expressing space have been developed over the last 500 years. The most representative of these is the invention of perspective.

As a result, it became possible to realistically transfer space onto a flat surface. Experts called this the "art of illusion"—a method that maximizes optical effects. It involves making things appear a certain way even if they are not actually so in reality. This was the result of diligent efforts focused on the visible world.

Thanks to this, Western painting developed by leaps and bounds. Therefore, the space represented in Western landscape painting deals with the world unfolding before one's eyes. It is, in essence, a physical space.

In contrast, the space depicted in Eastern painting is not actual. This was natural for Eastern people, who were more interested in the world hidden behind the visible than in the visible world itself. They endeavored to express the invisible world by comparing it to the visible one. Experts refer to this as "painting the intention." Therefore, the space that appears in the landscape paintings that dominate Eastern art is psychological or philosophical.

Yong Hwan-cheon’s painting also focuses on the staging of landscapes through space. However, the space appearing in his paintings also has an interpretive character. Although they look like abstract paintings where colors and geometric lines harmonize, they are not real spaces. Therefore, the space he expresses lacks a sense of three-dimensional depth.

While he faithfully follows perspective—specifically linear perspective (a method where objects shrink toward a vanishing point to show depth)—his work appears flat. This is due to his colors and the densely composed vertical and horizontal lines. He divides the canvas with strong colors, as if composing color fields.

What kind of landscape is Yong Hwan-cheon trying to stage by using space? Or rather, what is he trying to say through these landscapes?

His paintings feature indoor and outdoor scenes that collide in a single frame with heterogeneous qualities. He captures a viewpoint looking out from indoors through a window or a door, based on a geometric composition. Thus, they appear as metaphysical spaces.

The interior is composed of walls where geometric lines and colors are intricately described, while the scene outside the window is depicted with natural touches, such as fields or a sky with clouds. Through such heterogeneous composition, the artist says he wants to "find the relationships between people woven by chance and necessity, or the connection between myself and the world."