Leaf of spirit (Ha Sang-Rim)
-Park, Young-taik

10.17 ~ 31, 2007

Ambiguous to give it a name: it is somewhere within the range of colors. Familiar but unsure it is. For our bare eyes, it is uneasy to tell numerous hues. The color names may never have been made in any languages, hence almost impossible to find the matching one. How you could describe or designate colors seems to be at the tip of the tongue; however, you would eventually become frustrated from failing to find a proper name for them.
Ha Sang-rim's colors are not to found in the nature; they are synthetic. Still the colors are hardly catalogued in any color index made by humans. Your sense does seem to acknowledge them, but your brain is unable to point out the exact matches: something blueish, something reddish, something grayish, etc. Perceiving color is very psychological; it is beyond logics. Colors only can complete a painting. Color layers, color patches or color coats on a blank surface are often identified as a painting. Alchemists or magicians they are: they create their own signature colors with mass-produced pigments. They make inexplicable yet definitely recognizable tones and depth from mixing and matching various hues, adding strange materials, trying different thickness of solvents, coating over one layer to another, as well as investing time for doing the work. Such cumulative effects are the results we see.

He covers the flat canvas with black paint; and the firm, single-colored bed is the outcome. Any characteristics of media, brushstrokes or such trails become unseen; only mechanically and artificially well-finished color field does exist. Then he affixes the fine line tapes on the colored canvas. Now the flat surface has become of the strata made from a canvas cloth, many color coats, and the lines. Outlines, which configure a flower, are of taped lines and bare canvas exposed after detaching the line tapes. Two kinds of lines remind me of yin and yang, existence and non-existence, life and death, also creation and extinction. What the set of two lines implies is personally enticing. Existing tapelines and linear traces where there used to be tapes before removing them compose his drawings.

The artist says that Hanbok's shiny, delicate and beautiful colors must have deeply inspired his color sense. Silk is subtly bi-colored or multiple-colored on its own: it is quite puzzling to point out a single hue from the delicate fabric. Colors of the silk seem to change with the lights. Such remarkable elegance and immeasurable depth must be the core of the inspiration. He applies numerous layers of several colors on a canvas until satisfied; he then unfolds his line drawings on the canvas. Graceful lines flowing resemble fish or even protozoa slowly whirling in the water. Lines are definitely in the shape of either a flower or an ovary of a plant. The drawing is as if pausing the exact moment of seeds spreading out of the flower ovary, and the captured scene is visually strong. The linear images of a plant or a flower are overlapped and tremble on the sensual yet still background. Dots scattered around adds the movement over the calm canvas: the dots entail a lot, such as the time passing, life and death, creation and extermination, etc.

Drawing-like features are certainly sensed from the large, decorative flower image placed on the color field. Taped lines and traces of removed line tapes, delightful touches and rhythmical breaths, sudden pause of ceaseless flows, and such hollow movements are all about his painting, or his drawing. In his early works, he divided the canvas into several color blocks; scribbling and fluttering lines were all over. Such lines strived for forming a certain shape though wavered in the end. Later between 1998 and 2000 onwards, a single petal was sketched with the vibrant brush strokes and was placed on a single-colored background. It seems that works during this period were the beginning of the present creations. In these years, the works were more expressionistic with the freer and livelier brush strokes. At the same time, somewhat automatic lines were also seen. Brush strokes and a mechanical line run counter to each other, elevating tensions there within. Later such two-fold characters have become distinctive in his paintings. The painting is a plant image of ash-like color whirling around or slowly sinking on this single-colored canvas. There is so much to be told underneath the stillness of the painting.

The blend of graphite and pigment streams down on the canvas; it creates particular tones and materials in accordance with the line tapes delineating a flower image, which look unreal to the eyes. Color of a flower is both artificial and imaginary. Everything seems blanched and reduced to ashes; or it even brings up the metallic image like tin foils. This flower is far from one, which usually symbolizes the effervescent beauty of life. Hence, his flower has run down the climax of its life cycle running towards the end. The nature of life and the laws of life have been the enlightenment for Asians. They must have been represented in the landscape paintings and literati paintings. Neutralizing the animality and reborn to gain the vegetability through the efforts. It is the spirit of Asian art that reflects the nature and compassion of the universe. Besides, it turns our eyes away from humans. It also fathoms all the living creatures in the nature and communicates with others. In fact, it must be what art means. It seems that Ha Sang-rim wishes to confer the circulation of life and death through flowers and plant images. The artist's personal experience and perception are impressed in his paintings. It does not need to be a flower to be exact; it is all about the image of life. Somehow I also find the portrait of the artist in the painting.