[Anchor]

Mid-career artist Park Hyun-joo unfolds a world of color and light using materials she creates herself. While monochromatic, her work displays a unique formative beauty through the depth created by layering and the sanctity held within gold-leaf borders.

Reporter Lee Ju-sang reports.

[Reporter]

[Presence of Light / Through September 6 / Youngeun Museum of Contemporary Art]

Deep, serene red is surrounded by gold leaf that exudes a sacred aura.

The gold leaf represents a "divine light" that remains untainted by darkness.

It carries the atmosphere of Western medieval iconography.

[Park Hyun-joo / Artist: Including the religious meaning that the gold leaf provides, I connect it to the sublimity that light offers.]

It is a process of allowing inner light to emerge through layered colors.

[Park Hyun-joo / Artist: While it certainly includes the meaning of painting light, I began to think of it as work that contains my longing for that light.]

To capture that light, the artist focuses on her materials.

She creates her own world of light and color by hand-crafting everything from the base surface to the paint itself.

[Park Hyun-joo / Artist: I start with raw linen, applying glue and using gesso I made myself. It has a property that absorbs water and paint very well.]

Beyond the depth expressed by monochrome, she also presents the flow of color and light through various images existing in nature.

[Park Hyun-joo / Artist: The time I spend working is a time for realizing and looking into our lives themselves. So, as I keep layering the paint, I suppose I am immersing myself into the work.]

The paint, which fills the canvas as it is layered, holds a maternal warmth that embraces everything, along with an immersion as deep as the layers themselves.

Through the traces of accumulated time and materiality, she adds Korean traditional aesthetics and philosophy to abstract expressionist color fields.

(Video Editing: Lee Seung-hee, VJ: Oh Se-kwan)