SUK Chuljoo (1950 ~) is an artist who has constructed his independent aesthetic beyond that of any particular genre of contemporary Korean art. After starting his career in modern Oriental painting, SUK became part of a greater movement in the name of modernizing traditional Korean painting from the 1980s that eventually would label him a virtuoso. The artist's oeuvre displays a consistent theme of reinterpreting the Korean tradition, fading in the midst of contemporary culture, into a new visual language. His artworks within the last ten years in particular display peculiarities and subtleties which almost render the genre of Korean painting obsolate.
　　　During almost thirty of those fifty years, he was part of the faculty at his alma mater to cultivate the next generation of artists, and has proved himself a role model as both a painter and educator. This year, he concluded his career as an educator and is now off to new start as an artist only. Throughout his career, SUK received many prestigious awards (the 9th annual Art Editor's Choice Awards in 1990, the 6th annual Korea Artist Prize of 1997, and 2nd annual Korean Association of Art Critics Award for Creativity in 2010), and demonstrated his diligent developments and transformations through his twenty-one solo exhibitions. This particular solo show has been curated at the largest scale to underscore the artist's conclusion of a chapter of his career and a pledge to a new start, and a comprehensive retrospective of the artist's paintings is set to be published. Although there exist plenty of reviews by outstanding critics tracing his every development, the fragmentary texts seem inadequate to create a complete timeline of the artist's career. The prospect to organize SUK's artistic developments in a historiographical manner and imbibe meaning, along with the exhibition, is truly a privilege. Therefore, this treatise will begin from SUK's career post-1980 when he established himself as an artist like no other, and will divide the trajectory into three components to examine each process of development and characteristics accordingly: (1) early 1980s to late 1990s, (2) late 1990s to mid-2000s, (3) mid-2000s to the present. Before a serious discussion on these three periods, a brief introduction to SUK's career pre-1980 is also due.
　　　When SUK stepped into the art world in the 1980s as a not-so-young college graduate, he found himself in the midst of an artistic turmoil. On one hand there was the debate on nationalist art, on the other was the more international trend revolving around new-figurative art; "contemporary" art was on the rise. On the Western art front, discussions on nationalism and the Korean identity under the premise of the Korean Monochrome movement from 1970s were coming to an end, the ink-and-wash method was developing in the Korean painting field, and the younger generation pioneered the Minjung Art Movement against the older generation of artists. The debate between the traditionalists and modernists surrounding Korean painting in particular focused on subjects, media, and technique rather than on the spiritual essence necessary for the sustainability of the genre. This led to the rediscovery of the Korean traditional nature, Koguryo-style wall paintings, folklore, folk paintings and various arts and crafts, and instigated interest in more modern subjects such as cityscapes. The rapid, forceful brushstrokes and drip painting, along with the emphasis on negative space so central to the ink-and-wash painting genre evolved into an amalgam of disparate territories of color, composition, the conceptual and the concrete. By the time he graduated from college, SUK's artworks had changed discernibly in terms of both content and form from those of his earlier ones. In the midst of drastic changes in the international arts circle, SUK took on the very important responsibility of maintaining the genre of Korean painting, and diligently concentrated on developing the field. In light of SUK's artistic timeline, the early 1980s to the late 1990s can be classified as his early period. During this time, the artist reduced the changes made to the original Korean painting, and explored new forms and subjects through various artistic experiments to establish original artworks. Subjects such as the mask dance, totem pole, calligraphy, porcelain, beoseon (Korean socks), thimble, and spool became icons of the fading Korean tradition, and cityscapes, figures, and the television monitor became symbolic subjects of the modern lifestyle. Though SUK eventually came to be known as a color painter from his earlier use of more traditional media such as Korean ink and tints, it was clear that he was more than willing to use of these aforementioned media he found fit to convey his message. SUK also started to incorporate Korean ink and acrylic and replaced hwaseonji (Oriental painting paper) with canvas or objects from the 1990s and expanded the potential of Korean painting by liberating himself from the limitations of media. This period of SUK's career is best summarized as a pursuit towards　the crossroad between tradition and modernity; the examination for possibilities from Western painting and contemporary art of the West as a means escape the limitations of expression in Korean painting.
　　　From SUK's Suburbs, which earned him a prize at the 1981 Joongang Art Competition (the year of the artist's graduation), one can gain a sense of his abandonment of the Cheong Jeonstyle landscape and the subsequent conversion to a combination of ink-and-wash and Western composition to create a modern cityscape. This painting depicts a densely-packed lower-class neighborhood pushed to the outskirts of the city during rapid urbanization, where boarded roofs and haphazard placement of television antennas create a peculiar contrast. SUK's then-favored subjects such as boarded roofs, portraits, and cityscapes filled with high-rise buildings transpire the gloomy sentiment of a gray city from a bystander's perspective, rather than social criticism. Field, a series depicting the Korean traditional mask dance which Showcased in 1985 at SUK's first solo exhibition at Seoul Gallery in association with Seoul Newspaper, made it known that the artist was actively experimenting with the combination of traditional subjects with novel forms. The rapid and daring brushstrokes that suggest movement and rhythm, integration of the figures and background with drip painting, utilization of negative space and attempt at various compositions all attest to the artist's improved visual articulation.
　　　SUK's early works can be classified as before or after the year 1986, when the artist began his famed Life Journal series of more than thirty years and counting, the umbrella under which he released many more sequences. The Life Journal series begins with the TV Series , which deals with the evaporation of tradition under the overwhelming influence of mass media, and continues on to the Letter Painting and the Jar sequence, the former of which depicts modern interpretations of Joseon period folk painting iconography combined with Chunghyo Ideology (Confucian loyalty towards both country and one's parents). SUK's diligent pursuit of rediscovering traditional subjects and experimenting with form from the 1980s garnered him the 9th annual Art Editor's Choice Awards in 1990. Of the Life Journal series, a particular sequence of works depicting the Korean traditional Jar became a stepping stone early on in the artist's career. The Jar sequence attested to SUK's maturity in developing and examining with traditional content and form, which therefore became an opportunity to make his name known in the art world. To this day, the Jar sequence is SUK's most famous body of works, along with its sequel, Boudoir. The purpose of beginning the Jar sequence was, to borrow the artist's words, "to reconsider the disappearance of the old in the midst of urbanization and society's transition to modernity"; in that regard, the sequence does not seem to be entirely irrelevant to the earlier Mask Dance sequence. However, should such former works have faithfully reproduced subjects pertaining to macroscopic and universal traditions of Korean culture by way of Oriental painting, the Jar sequence, by contrast, chooses to approach the issue by changing a microscopic world to a universal one. From the Jar sequence onwards, SUK returns to the minute details of his life, and utilizes objects once familiar to him that bring back memories of his youth.
　　　His Jar artworks are fogged up with innumerable memories: of the time when the young SUK ran away after accidentally breaking the jar lid whilst flying a kite, of his penniless childhood when he would bake sweet potatoes with his mother to sell on the streets, of his mother who would pray for the wellness of the family by pouring lustral water on the lid – and so many more. During childhood, his world was his home, his home was his mother, and the jar is a significant symbol which brings back memories of childhood. While the jar, a symbol for fading tradition, is situated frontally at the center of the canvas, the relatively microscopic images of lustral water, paper socks, boat, dried pollack, and straw rope all contain personal memories regarding motherhood. As if revisiting a working potter's sentiment, SUK attempted a technical experiment by boldly combining the Western medium of acrylic with Korean ink, thus retaining the solubility of Oriental painting whilst enlivening the texture. He also used dirt to animate a color and texture similar to ocher, rubbed the surface to maximize the effect, and implemented traditional finger painting by scratching out the designs from the hobun (oyster shell white) surface. The background of the jar painting, which depicts celestial bodies, the lunar cycle, and traditional patterns, alludes to the space-time concept of spiritual confluence between human beings and the universe.
　　　The Boudoir sequence of the Life Journal series, created in the mid-1990s, is also built on memories of his mother, who made all articles of clothing for the family by hand, and of playing with her threads. The artist conducts further advanced formal experiments by incorporating antiquated subjects such as the spool, thimble, needle and thread. He also further emphasized his detailed range of color and tactile matière by collaging everyday articles, sewing on the canvas by hand, or adjusting the frame to a different geometric shape. Furthermore, mutually corresponding factors such as painterly expression, masculine creation, spirituality, cool colors versus ornamental handicrafts, female labor, and warm colors in the Boudoir sequence create a minute balance between dualities, which arouse tension on the canvas. The geometric form embossed on the surface of Korean paper, mulberry paper, or canvas utilizing the frottage technique and matière are intimately related to the modern expressive techniques and creative mental activities established by mostly male artists. The materiality and surface effect through reproduction versus existence, plane versus relief and erratic composition are postmodern devices which go beyond the planar property of paintings. On the other hand, the collaged or detailed thimble, spool, and needle, hand-sewn or -drawn stitches, and the loose piece of thread all have to do with handicrafts. These objects had always been deemed everyday and ornamental to be elevated to the status of art, and thus had been debased as emblems of the material world. Of the two contrasting elements, the former decisively takes over the entire canvas and creates a striking universal aesthetic. However, the handicraft, ornamental elements unexpectedly bring about personal memories which create tension on the canvas.
　　　SUK's career enters into its second phase by the late 1990s, and two very important changes occur in his production technique between then and mid-2000s. Of the two, SUK began his regular usage of the Western medium canvas, along with acrylic. By introducing the canvas into his artistic process, the artist secured the ruggedness of his artworks and was able to mold the canvas to any desired shape and size. The combination of acrylic on canvas was also instrumental in liberating textural expression and diversifying the color spectrum. SUK's second technique steered away from the traditional painting method using paint, and instead employed the chemical process of water and pigment dispersion. After underpainting the canvas with acrylic and applying a layer of a different color on the dry underpaint, the artist "erases" out the details on the second layer of acrylic with sweeping brushstrokes (brush is held parallel to the canvas). To put it simply, he paints with water, and rubs it out to create exquisite details. This method, unique to SUK, received attention from critics and scholars who labeled it "water-painting," or the "wiping method." Despite using the Western medium acrylic, the artist was able to simultaneously maintain the water solubility of Korean painting ingredients and take yet another step toward freedom of artistic expression. Along with the aforementioned "water-painting," SUK experimented by foregoing water, and scratching out the details using a custommade wooden tool with branches on one end on a wet layer of acrylic. The artist couldn't help but rely on his intuition for the most part, as chemical interactions between water and pigments resulted in unexpected consequences, and to correct such mistakes was not an easy option. As this requires extensive experience with calligraphy, it is most likely that SUK's repeated familiarization with chirography from his early years helped out with his experiments. Both the wiping and scratching methods evolved to their advanced forms, and constitute SUK's most important artistic framework to this day.
　　　The dominant color that is finally revealed by the "water-painting" technique is decided by the first layer of acrylic applied on canvas. Sequences of the Life Journal series such as Time Travel, Gloaming, and The Memory of Seonunsa have mostly black underpainting and white overpainting. The monochrome selection (such as black or gray), smooth flow of lines, and the blurriness of the ambiguous form are all intentional in these artworks. Despite the disparate media and technique, such elements were utilized for the purpose of realizing the humanistic spirit of literary paintings, using the solubility and immediacy of the ink-and-wash technique, with a modernist approach. One critic appropriately phrased the artist's desired Korean aesthetic and intimacy as "the aesthetic of permeation, dissemination, and translucency." During this period in his career, SUK continued to break down the genre boundaries between Eastern and Western paintings by combining his usage of Korean ink and acrylic, and questioned the painterly reality by contrasting planar surfaces to reliefs and depicting shadows to allude to existence.
　　　SUK's art had progressed on to an entirely different phase by 2005. The extensive New Scenery in Dream was released in 2005, along with the Moon Porcelain Jar series and Vase. The more experimental subjects of grass and various plants during the artist's second phase developed into a new series titled The Memory of Nature. New Scenery in Dream and The Memory of Nature are complementary in that they draw out the natural world from both macroscopic and microscopic perspectives, respectively; these two series display the essence of SUK's original artistic mind, and continuously evolve into various new forms and possibilities to this day. Of the two, the New Scenery in Dream series in particular is hailed as SUK's magnum opus. SUK's consistent ground-breaking artistic transformations and efforts to expand the horizons of modern Korean painting garnered him the Grand Prize in the Creativity category of the 2nd annual Korean Association of Art Critics Award in 2010. Of the two key characteristics of his artworks during this most recent phase, the first is the main motif of the great Mother Nature. Through his panoramic depictions of the great nature onto the canvas utilizing Western media, SUK's artworks are put on a delicate edge between Western landscape paintings and traditional landscape paintings. The transition onto a larger canvas, fine coordination of colors reminiscent of the nature's auspicious change of seasons, and the macroscopic point of view are natural results during such a developmental phase of the artist's career. The second characteristic of SUK's recent artworks is the strategy of reinterpreting the works of prominent artists of Korean art history and paying attention to Korean traditional art and general discourse Korean painting. Followed by the introduction of Western Postmodernist art to Korea in the early 1990s, modern artists – regardless of genre – became absorbed in actively accepting Postmodernism as a means to create new art and criticize existing ones. SUK's new strategy was made feasible in such a context which, while not original, was appropriate.
　　　In accordance with this concept, nature was regarded as bearing the utmost value in the art theory of the East Asian cultural sphere. Nature was an ideal space for artists to polish and attain this Oriental spirit, and deep mountains and valleys were the most sought-after subjects. This concept of nature affected the aesthetic discourse of Korean traditional society, and was reflected in the conceptual scenic painting oriented towards idealism. Around the same period, exploring and sketching famous domestic scenic spots began to be regarded as a compulsory course to create art since realistic scenic paintings became popularized by Gyeom Jae JEONG Seon in the late Joseon Dynasty. With the increasingly heated discussions on Korean tradition and modernization of Korean painting in the 1980s, realistic scenic painting, inherited from JEONG Seon, To Cheong Jeon and So Jeong, BYUN Gwansik, came to the center of attention as a unique Korean tradition in need of successors, which elevated the level of interest in nature and mountains. The duality of the view of nature in Oriental painting naturally bled into the discourse on Korean painting, and while the expressions of it were limitless, Korean painting contemporaries of SUK regarded the grand nature as an important space imbued with meaning from the Oriental spiritual tradition and its bloodlines. n this context, the nature meant the mountains for SUK, and the mountains took a special place in both his personal and artistic life. He was born in Nuha-dong (currently in Seochon area) at the foot of the Inwang Mountain in Seoul and was brought up with the mountains. Upon finishing his studies of realistic scenic landscape under Cheong Jeon, he embarked on artistic expeditions to various domestic mountains; he also lived off the mountains as a mountain guide when he was living mouth to hand during his youth. Despite having cultivated his sentiment and realization of life and artistic spirit through these mountains, the artist delayed transferring the mountains onto the canvas for a long time in order to escape from the shade of his mentor, Cheong Jeon. However, the artist was, as he put it, "crazy about the mountains," and after spending much time climbing mountains and practicing painting, became unable to hike due to a condition in his knees approximately ten years ago. It was during these dark times when SUK was contemplating on the portrayal of desire to once again climb the mountains that he discovered the analogous relationship in AN Gyeon's Scenery in Dream, and hence borne the series New Scenery in Dream rooted in his own dreams. Scenery in Dream is attributed to the painter AN Gyeon, whom King Sejong's prince Anpyeong ordered to portray his dream in which he cavorted on a field of peach blossoms with professors of the Hall of Worthies, including PARK Pangyeon.　The peach blossoms are in full bloom in the original Scenery in Dream; SUK explains the reason for his interest in AN Gyeon's painting: I noticed that AN Gyeon expressed the stark difference between natural real world and fantastical earthly paradise in Scenery in Dream. While drawing real mountains and streams as earthy mountains without rocks, and even as hillocks, he depicted the fantastic world as a dreamy atmosphere with mysterious rocky mountains.
　　　I was deeply impressed by his division between the real world and peach blossoms paradise, which also made clear the difference of heterogeneous worlds on one hand and naturally consolidated each seasonal landscape, which seemed to be divided by utilizing the fog that saturated into each scene, and eventually expand the spaces at　the same time. The artist was attracted by Scenery in Dream in two aspects, the first being that he discovered the passageway of "dream" as a means to replace reality, and the second being the fog that could so naturally bridge reality to the fantastical. He did not depend on either photos or sketches to utilize the dream-like mechanism during his artistic process. In the beginning, he relied on the memories of various mountains he hiked in his younger years and of the familiar mountains in the vicinity of Seoul; eventually he moved on to depict mountains of the imagination. The mountains from memory and the imagination vary from piece to piece, and range from familiar hillocks to magnificent mountains covered with strange rocks and bizarre stones, impervious to the human touch. As is the ambiguous nature of memories and the imagination, the outlines of mountains are vague, and the boundaries between water surface and the sky blurred. The milky white fog burrows into the winding gaps of mountains to enhance the mysticism of the grand nature consisting of the sky, mountains, bodies of water, and waterfalls. SUK explains the origin of the fog, an important mechanism of his works, in the traditional Joseon period scenic painting, Scenery in Dream. However, there is no need to go so far; the fog in Cheong Jeon's realistic scenic painting is an essential element to stimulate the Korean natural atmosphere, along with the Korean sensibility as a whole.
　　　The fog in New Scenery in Dream brings about a hazy, dreamy atmosphere as if there is a thin film of moisture on the surface of the canvas, and renders the boundary between the real and the unreal more ambiguous and confusing by setting them up against each other. To escalate this effect, SUK further developed the water-painting technique with heightened complexity and intuition. After the water flows down with the first stroke of an air gun (a replacement for the brush), the artist repeatedly sets the big canvas upright and down, and wipes out the residue with a brush for a hazier rendering of the artwork. It is only natural that the mystery and magnificence of nature, along with the sentiment of the auspiciousness of the season, are exponentially amplified to correlate with the enlarged canvas. Therefore, the size of a canvas is enlarged to approximately 2m2 to 3m2, or multiple canvases become attached. The landscape spills over on to the edge of the canvas as if the piece is part of nature, and the artworks can become attached to one another to create an elongated scenic view. Consequently, it can suffice that the New Scenery in Dream sequences can all be connected to create a grand panoramic view of the grand nature.
　　　The late Korean-American artist Theresa CHA Hakkyung (1951~ 1982) believed that art should materialize "the dreams of the audience," and demonstrated excellent talent in making the recognition of division and boundaries between the real and the unreal (dreams and desire), and consciousness and unconsciousness ambiguous by utilizing elements such as the silver screen, Korean traditional weave, glimmering candle light and darkness. Like the various screening instruments used in her works, the water screen in SUK's New Scenery in Dream extends the boundary between the dreams toward nature in the modern society and the real world to a vaguer dimension. The projected image of the dream on the water screen develops from white to blue and pink, and evolves to a coordination of mysterious and beautiful colors depicting nature's seasonal change, stimulating the viewers' senses and enhancing reality. It is no exaggeration that this allure of this series arises from the aesthetic experience which brings dramatic optical illusion that a mere dream resembles reality. The landscape sprawls like a manifestation of the dream, and presents an ideal space to cleanse the soul to reach spiritual enlightenment in the midst of a parched modern society. SUK began to overlay a cross-striped net by using a special gel on the transparent moisture film from 2013, and applied this technique on all of his works since last year. He explained that this checkered pattern is derived from the pixel, the foundation of the digital system.16) This could be interpreted as a metonymy for propagation of digital equipment and the expansion of the digital culture of the modern society. Communication with the world within the digital society is indirect in that one connects to a virtual space by seeing or touching the mechanical surfaces of the computer and smart phone screens. It is inevitable that the distance between nature and humans comes farther apart in an age where images of the virtual space replace that of reality, and the new pieces of New Scenery in Dream both reflect and provide a solution to this problematic situation. The transparent checkered pattern net in SUK's recent works, which overcasts the entire surface of the canvas, is only visible up close.
　　　However, due to the irregular checkered pattern of the net and the heterogeneous layering of the peculiar gel substance, the audience can thoroughly appreciate the sensitivity and rapport of the analogue handicraft, as opposed to the mechanical nature of the pixel. In comparison to the preceding New Scenery in Dream sequences, the haziness and dimness, along with the dramatic optical illusion, become intensified, and the vague sensitivity of time and space, and a newfound tactile aspect, are added. Recent New Scenery in Dream artworks, which are covered by two layers consisting of water and gel, lead the viewer from reality to dream, then from dream to dream: a "dream within a dream." They cannot help but become stupefied by the nature in a "dream within a dream," and experience the union between self and things. Another important aspect of SUK's works created after 2005, including the New Scenery in Dream series, is that they are all dependent on memory and the existing image, or the imagination. SUK's artworks do not rely on the originals – in other words, reality does not exist in the real world – therefore, interpretation is possible with a simulacre approach. For example, New Scenery in Dream took to Scenery in Dream as a model, but transformed the latter into a completely different character. The crowded fields of flowers in The Memory of Nature series are expressed with traces of scratches and dots covering the entire canvas, without having had an original piece of inspiration. The reinforced peculiar, thick textural quality and saturation of brushstrokes and dots on the canvas of SUK's recent works are reminiscent of Abstract Expressionism all-over paintings, and of Monet's Water Lilies series further down the art historical timeline. However, the throngs of unnamed flora are pregnant with the principles of creation, akin to an epic lyric poem. The simulation of the Korean symbol of the Joseon Dynasty white porcelain in the Moon Porcelain Jar and Blue and White Porcelain series depicts the actual cutting away of the jar to express embossed carving and engraving, painted in the moiré fringe, plants, and sceneries with blue. With the reinforcement of the solid jar form and its tactile property, and the microscopic implication of the world surrounding it, the White Porcelain series is the simulation closest to the original model. SUK utilized all kinds of mimicry far beyond the level of simple imitation. For example, he used Western media to mimic substance and solubility of Korean painting, to take after the spirit of Eastern liberal arts, to imitate nature and behave as if in a dream, etc. This is not mere feigned simplicity, but strategic mimicry. Hyperrealist expressions only render the subject truer to life, and cannot suffice to reach the artist's objective. He instead founded a complex and ornate technique with water to realize a fantastical world of nature – a dream which does not exist but seems to exist. In this regard, the evolution of form in his art is an appropriate method for visually materializing the theme. Therefore, his works are not inactive, Baudrillard-esque simulacra which cannot transform reality; instead, they are Deleuze-esque simulacra which open possibilities for new creation and distinction. As are all things fantastical, the ultimate objective of SUK's mimicry is to display an opening to reality through the aesthetic experience of a "dream within a dream," and provide the will and momentum to live in the real world, endlessly dreaming new dreams.