The way of Meandering

Art critic Yi, Jooheon
Ways extend in winding lines. There are ravines between mountains. Our reason cuts out the world, as if it were a straight highway, but has never got out of ‘the way of meandering’. The Buddhist cross (卍) is an image that reveals such a world law symbolically. If something rises, it must fall; if it goes to the left, then it must return to the right. Na, Hyo Kab’s brush tips move following the principles of antagonism.

Mr. Na majored in engineering in university. It was not from the beginning that he decided to be a painter. He liked gazing at things and appreciating them. In his school days, he read almost all the books related to art in the library. In doing so, he gradually bolstered his dream to become a painter. After finishing university, he worked for a time at an automobile company. He had long aspired to live abroad so he could freely pursue his dreams. Later, when he worked for a trading company, he traveled to a lot of places around the world. In the end, he went to New Zealand to study art.

He seemed to inherit the blood of nomads from the start. His style is that of constantly experimenting with his possibilities and limits, rather than settling in his current state. In a certain way, we can say that his life’s path, as it wound like a river’s course, established the direction of his art. It is related to the fact that there appear a lot of meanders in his painting, as well as the images of bottles and cups, and symbols and characters such as 0 (Zero), ∞ (Infinity), α (Alpha), and ? (Omega).

Light and electricity move in waves. The curves of sine and cosine also resemble waves. The act of making strokes with a brush begins with a zigzag. His pictures look neither only at mountains nor only at ravines. They contain both mountains and ravines. It is the story of ‘Infinity (∞)’, or ‘Eternity’. And it is also the story of ‘Absence (0)’, or ‘Finite’. It is the story not only of ‘the Beginning (α)’ but also of ‘the End (?)’. Of course, it is the story of woman as well as of man.

From the paintings containing bottles and cups, we can hear the story of cosmos through the story of man and woman. Bottles are destined to be emptied of alcohol. Cups are destined to receive the alcohol from them. But both bottles and cups are not the real owner of the alcohol. The alcohol goes over to the mouth of the existence that holds the bottle and cup. It is ‘God’.

The owner of a mountain is not the mountain itself, and the owner of a ravine is not the ravine itself. The owner of a man is not the man himself, and the owner of a woman is not the woman herself. It is God that has determined that there are ‘Yin and Yang’, ‘Man and Woman’, ‘Plus (+) and Minus (-)’, and ‘Mountain and Ravine’ in the world. God embodies and achieves Himself in all those energy movements of antagonism. It is only because we can’t see God that we believe we operate the world ourselves. I believe I make the world move. However, Freud once said that we don’t live actively according to our own subjectivity, but we live passively by the power controlling our consciousness. Unconsciousness controls consciousness. DNA has already determined the behavioral patterns of an individual. It is not right to say that I turn on the light only because I hold the switch. The light is turned on by a battery, by electricity.

Of course, however, man has unyielding free will. Though man himself is not the origin of the world, he has the will with which he can face the origin of the world. The reason why Mr. Na was shocked when seeing the movie Papillon as a middle school student is because he vividly felt the great power of the free will.

Therefore, to him, all the mysteries of life which are created when man’s free will meets God’s absolute will can not help being objects of permanent artistic curiosity as well as wellsprings of passion.

He feels ecstasy when he digs out the mystery and expresses it. The mystery is simultaneously very familiar and routine and aloof and detached. He put both the daily and the aloof together in his paintings.

In style, Mr. Na’s paintings are very expressionistic. In the word ‘Expressionism’, we feel the existence of the power of outward (ex-) movement, or eruption (press). In considering that he likes to experience everything for himself, it is quite natural that he prefers expressionistic energy.

Painted in such a way, his works give forth energies endlessly and powerfully. The meanders from his wild brush strokes add the resonance. The waves of the energies that his paintings deliver to us are formidable. People usually say, “A great wave happens” when an event takes place that has a great influence on a multitude of people. He paintings remind us of the above sentence. His art marches on, powerfully bending and reflecting, following the waves of light, rivers, and the world. It is a joyful experience that our minds can ride on the waves and flow with them.