The 1st Solo Exhibition

YUMI CHON

The 1st Solo Exhibition

21st Nov. - 27th Nov. 2007

Gallery GAIA (Seoul, Korea)

I am trying to view nature in terms of Taoism, one of the oriental philosophies which believes that people should lead a simple honest life and not interfere with the course of natural events. This focuses on the harmonized interrelationship between nature and human beings. The main theory of this doctrine can be summarized as one word-‘inaction’. It doesn’t mean idleness, but an exclusion of human activities in the cycle of nature.

Asian countries have been based on agriculture and this has let people adapt themselves to circumstances and nature. People can sow seeds and do their best to cultivate them, but it is nature that makes them grow. From this point of view, human activities have a certain limitation in the process of nature. Therefore, I set my mind to focus on the cycle of nature and have made various attempts to express it.

While preparing my first solo exhibition, I focused on visualizing the damaged ground on paper by making scratches and rough textures with knives and sharp tools and then added dried flowers or drew other motifs which symbolize the constant power of nature. Because I think that even though the nature is being hurt and sometimes a certain part of lands seems to be severely deteriorated, new leaves have sprouted up on that barren land, thanks to the self-treatment system of nature. Those patterns were applied to fabrics, and other objects such as tiles and tables in order to communicate my notions to people and to let them consider nature by seeing these patterns on daily necessities.

YUMI CHON