Colorful patterns induce imagination

By Kwon Mee-yoo

From pink flowers to blue pentagons, the color palette and patterns of Hong Jung-hee, 66, captivate visitors entering Gallery Hyundai Gangnam Space in Apgujeong, southern Seoul.

Her first solo exhibition in six years is now ongoing at the gallery located amid office buildings in southern Seoul. The two-floor exhibition is filled with some 60 pieces of Hong's latest works since 2005.

The series is called "Nano," coming from the smallest particle in physics. Just as the smallest unit can transform into anything, she wants unlimited interpretation on her pictures.

Hong has been dedicated to color field abstraction since the 1970s and has established a solid world of color and pattern.

The geometric patterns in Hong's paintings can be interpreted in various ways; triangles for a mountain or an arrow and five-cornered shapes for a house.

Some patterns are even, while the others are irregular. Her signature four-leaf clover or modified cross pattern has recently changed into irregular patterns like blooming flower shapes.

Her drawings do not have a top and bottom or right or left, so they can be hung in either direction, opening more possibility to the viewer's perception.

Color is another essence of Hong’s drawings. Her favorite combination is orange and pink. On a stretch of sharp orange, flower-like pink shapes fill the canvas. "There is no such pink in existing oil paints and I had to make the color from pigments by myself," she said.

She has also conducted experiments on material for the past 30 years. She painted on planed wooden tablets and mixed colors with used coffee grounds.

Recently, she settled for sawdust. Hong painted all the works for her 2011 exhibition with oil paint mixed with strained sawdust through a sieve. The texture of sawdust adds a more cubic effect to the colorful shapes. The sawdust absorbs oil paint and it results in simpler, plainer works compared to other oil paintings.

An art critic Oh Gwang-su referred Hong as “an alchemist of color,” saying that the hues on Hong's canvas are the crystals of material and immaterial state portraying her inner world.

"Her signs first seemed to be only pigment crystals or natural coagulation of materials, then gradually began to form a shape as existence itself," he said. "The signs are presented as some images or are extremely simplified or contracted as part of a reduction process."

Hong graduated from the College of Fine Arts at Seoul National University and studied as an exchange scholar at the University of Michigan from 1979 to 1980.

The exhibition runs through March 20. Call (02) 519-0800 for more information.