Haeeun Lee: Summary Compositions - Jackson's Artwork Weblog

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Haeeun Lee gained the Summary/Non-representational Class Award within the Jackson’s Portray Prize this 12 months together with her work Chopin – Nocturne Op. 27 No. 2. On this interview, Rhiannon Inman Simpson, who gained the award the earlier 12 months, asks Haeeun about her studio observe, setting the scene for a portray, and the way she is aware of when a portray is finished.

Rhiannon: Are you able to inform us slightly about your creative background and the way your observe has developed over time?

Haeeun: My mom was a music instructor, my father labored for a monetary institute with a passion of gathering work, and the music that almost all carefully resembles the summary type of my work served as my instructor. Taking part in and listening to classical music, my mom’s hobbies, I used to be a contented youngster mimicking the conductor of the orchestra.

I had a powerful attachment to reasonable strategies since highschool and through college. So I studied artwork daily, from proper after college, a number of hours and generally the entire evening, for 5 years. After honing the technical points, I began to deal with greater than reasonable expressions, however I used to be fascinated with portray itself. The realisation that portray is increasingly like music got here to me, and listening to music allowed me to immerse myself in unknown feelings.

From the start, the music helped me significantly after I was engaged on the portray. So I looked for numerous composers and by chance listened to Messiaen: Le merle noir pour flûte et piano by Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992), who made music as regards to birdsong and its mysterious magic.

Instantly, with the need to visualise, I adopted the complicated construction of a single pure plant, depicting the plant in 12 colors, and centered your entire portray on the rhythmic melody like music. I then prolonged the topic to stadiums, inventory markets, and large cities. The vitality, vibrations and rhythms in these locations have been enticing, and the probabilities for imagining have been countless, so I noticed new potentialities of portray that I used to be glad with. Influenced by the aggressiveness of Joan Mitchell and Jackson Pollock in Summary Expressionism, he favored Monet, Bonnard, and Matisse. I needed so as to add gentle and house to the abstraction. Ignoring perspective and ignoring the burden of objects, it has change into extra summary as in music, composing the display with colors as a substitute of notes.

Chopin – Nocturne Op. 27 No. 2, 2021
Haeeun Lee
Oil on linen, 130.5 x 126 cm | 51.3 x 49.6 in

Rhiannon: There’s a robust sense of freedom and spontaneity in your work. Do you intend every portray and work from sketches, or work instinctively on the canvas?

Haeeun: I work on work similar to a music jam session. In an improvised jam session, every participant performs as they seem, however strictly follows the foundations of music in concord, composition, and development. On this manner, stunning chords may be heard and change into music. I additionally work in a manner much like this process. My work are sketches from begin to end. What color to begin with is deliberate first, and the remainder observe.

When just a few vital colors are determined at first, the creativeness is rapidly activated within the house between colors and attracts like weaving a internet with the deliberate gestures solely within the head. That is crucial sketch stage. As I enter, I resolve on the following color and course. Then I draw with nice enjoyable subconsciously altering the foundations within the relationship between gentle and objects in reasonable description.

Then, the image varieties an area, and I recall a scene at the moment, and as I start to really feel that I’ve entered a sure place, I rapidly draw some shapes on the display as if exploding, and it’s additional amplified by using the primary sketch rhythm.

In Search of Misplaced Time, 2022
Haeeun Lee
Oil on linen, 132 x 94 cm | 52 x 37 in

Rhiannon: How are you aware when a portray is completed?

Haeeun: When I’m glad with the attractive second within the portray, I cease working for a minute and doubt its completion for a second. I’ve to resolve when to complete based on the move I used to be immersed with, simply because the members who play the jam session resolve when the music will finish.

Respecting every second I’ve skilled whereas portray the image, each time I discover essentially the most stunning chord in an image, I’m going again for some time and take a look at it time and again. Then, when the image involves my thoughts, just like the face of a sure particular person, as if it have been born that manner, I don’t contact the image anymore. I simply needed to depart it like that ceaselessly.

The music that I choose is songs which have their very own stunning climax moments that may be repeated when my feelings move out and in after which again out and in. Once I end portray, I additionally examine the autonomous relationship wherein the motion of vitality in my display is just not boring, and the rhythm comes out of the display and enters the feelings of the viewer and finishes the drawing. When you really feel sufficient feelings within the music, you gained’t keep in mind the tip of the music properly. Relatively, continuity ought to be working. So in my case. The continuation ought to move into the spectator’s viewpoint.

Haeeun in her studio

Work in progress

Rhiannon: I see there are generally references to music in your titles and am fascinated with its position in your portray observe. Do you take heed to music while portray and if that’s the case, how does it affect the works?

Haeeun: Once I arrive on the studio, the very first thing I do is play music, loosen up and revel in, and after I get centered on the music, I’ve a want to precise myself via photos. Music serves to set again the whole lot within the bodily world round me.

Music is a vital component as a result of it offers me the facility to evoke very private feelings. I don’t reproduce the music of the title I gave to the image, however borrow the melodic energy of the music and provides the title to the music within the sense of empathising with the lyricism and fervour of the music.

I really feel like a toddler greater than ever, and happiness floods in. Then I’ve an excellent purpose for what I can do, so I can get pleasure from drawing. Once I draw, after I really feel that I’ve sufficient energy to direct the display, I flip off the music and deal with the display. When the display is just too huge and the vary of some colors which can be central to the image is widened, it looks like fixing a maths downside, after which the music will get in the best way. I draw it as if composing with colors as an extension of the move of music I used to be already listening to in my physique. Conducting your entire display is to make the music itself. After I end work with nice satisfaction, I’m going house and hold enthusiastic about it. And after I take a break, I take heed to the music I used to take heed to within the studio, and the scene and music of the work overlap and I enter the portray. I give the title in such a manner that the music is substituted for the move.

Adrenaline, 2022
Haeeun Lee
Oil on linen, 122 x 129.5 cm | 48 x 51 in

Rhiannon: I really feel a powerful panorama presence in your work and I’m inquisitive about your relationship with place – do you see your work as inner or exterior environments?

Haeeun: I create synesthesia by connecting work and music, so I exploit locations and landscapes equally. Once I take heed to a chunk of music, I think about a spot or surroundings that matches the music. Once I hear heavy metallic, I consider a darkish basement or bunker, and after I hear Bach’s music, I consider a phenomenal meadow. My synesthesia primarily consists of lyrical landscapes and numerous feelings. Then the climax is created by intentionally relating thrilling emotions.

Simply as a spot in a dream modifications absurdly based on an occasion, as a number of scenes in my head change, I repair the altering place with color. The place and object implied by color invade and dominate the house of the portray.

I’ve longed for unique landscapes since I used to be a toddler, and now I desire to think about with music moderately than expertise it myself. Due to this fact, the spatiality in my work ought to be seen as purely an object of interior longing.

Chaos, 2022
Haeeun Lee
Oil on linen, 130 x 150 cm | 51 x 59 in

Rhiannon: What does a typical working day within the studio appear to be for you? Do you might have any vital routines or rituals?

Haeeun: An vital a part of my work is to place me within the ambiance first. I’ve a powerful tendency to monopolise areas round me, and I get pleasure from absolutely having fun with the issues round me. At that second, inside that house, the music I take heed to ought to really feel prefer it’s solely popping out for me.

The music I take heed to typically is… Classical: Schubert, Piano Music, J.S. Bach, French Suites, Liszt – Piano Sonata in B minor. Additionally, my favorite heavy metallic bands: 5 Finger Demise Punch, Disturbed.

Metallic or rock music is important for forgetting issues I shouldn’t take into consideration, and it helps me categorical my boldness. Schubert: Piano Music is what I take heed to when it rains and J.S. Bach: French Suites helps to ascertain my emotional state and calm my thoughts and physique.

Feelings come and go simply, so after I consider work, I attempt to go to the studio as quickly as doable. Color is vital to my work, so I’ve a behavior of placing my palette first and placing my brushes in a cleaner. I often use a knife to take away lumps of paint from the palette, then choose new paint and place it on the palette. Even after I enter the studio, I attempt to not habitually take a look at the work. Taking a break for a minimum of a day, portray all the time needs to be a brand new topic for me, and I feel that portray ought to be confronted with a contemporary eye.

An ideal house alone is important, and there’s virtually silence in the course of the pre-painting stage, till the portray is completed, and for a day after the portray is completed.

I by no means sit on a chair whereas portray. Once I put down the comb after ending portray, I’ve a behavior of leaving it on my desk as a lot as doable and leaving the portray straight away, making an attempt to not look again on my choices and selections.

Haeeun Lee’s studio

Rhiannon: What’s your relationship with color and the way do you resolve on the color palette of a portray?

Haeeun: If I’m a conductor, colors are my devices. It’s the colors on the palette that I’m ready to maneuver as carefully as doable with my command and management.

When the shifting gentle of the solar shines on the objects, they change into one other instrument to me and enter my portray. No matter whether or not it’s an imaginary panorama that I’ve by no means seen earlier than, I purpose to make use of and reassemble all photographs. In a portray, the picture is a color and turns into an instrument.

Major colors play an vital position within the palette as they act as the topic of the display. With these colors, I as soon as once more increase the vary of colors to precise grandeur. Color works as a shifting sound from begin to end after I full a portray, similar to I make music.

Typically I get impressed by palettes. The unintended association of shapes and colors is harking back to a sure place, and I attempt to incorporate it into the display as it’s.

Color is my idea in a manner. That is what makes up my sun shades. The unchanging notion is my faith and additionally it is the idea of all my judgments. On this sense, color performs a dominant position on the display, and I all the time have just a few of those colors in my palette. It’s blue and inexperienced. Blue is sort of the sky, and inexperienced virtually acts because the earth.

Work in Progress: Ecstasy, 2022
Haeeun Lee
Oil on linen, 132 x 150 cm | 52 x 59 in

Rhiannon: What supplies or instruments may you not reside with out?

Haeeun: Quickly after I began studying portray, I boldly utilized oil paints to the display with a knife for the primary time, extending my present work. Now I can’t work with no knife. I paint whereas altering brushes and knives occasionally.
Once I enter my studio, the very first thing I do is fill with the odor of oil. Oil portray is the primary materials I’ve been utilizing since I used to be in faculty. At first, I actively used linseed and turpentine to make some elements appear to be watercolours and a few elements have been muddy, utilizing the character of the oil paint as it’s. However now, the form of the knife is extra vital to me than Linseed and Terefin.

Oil portray may be reworked whereas shifting three-dimensionally, like texture expression and sculpture on the display, so a brush and a knife work properly collectively. I don’t work on a number of tasks on the identical time. Earlier than the paint dries, I draw utilizing the property of shifting like a sculpture. So a medium that makes the paint much less dry is important. Many brushes and lots of paints should be seen at a look to suppose and create what color to make use of when drawing. So I have to make room on a big desk to rearrange and place these paints and brushes. A dry towel can be important to use numerous colors on to the display with the cleanest and clearest doable color. I all the time have a towel in my hand after I change one color to a different straight away. Additionally, I have to put on gloves to maintain the bodily situation the place I can get concepts from paint in your fingers. I don’t thoughts getting paint right here and there on my work garments, however I hate getting paint on my fingers a lot that I get offended.

The Firebird, 2022
Haeeun Lee
Oil on linen, 110 x 133 cm | 43.3 x 52 in

Rhiannon: When you may personal and reside with any art work what would it not be?

Haeeun: Whereas I used to be immersed within the exploration of portray with the widespread denominator of autonomous composition similar to music, I took a deep strategy to what freedom is. In my expertise, my work are music and sophisticated, however the free kind didn’t fulfill me with out following the interior order. I knew it, however after I truly did it, it actually was. After all, everybody has alternative ways of enthusiastic about order, however I valued the expression of braveness and can to freedom whereas drawing my work.

In Jackson Pollock’s work, it melts away. With out working away from the atmosphere, He proudly drapes paints on the canvas, and the colors that categorical his will are actually stunning. Pollock’s work One: Quantity 31, 1950 (1950), made in 1947, sarcastically, the results of such a daring motion, the paint floor, offers me the impression of listening to Bach’s music, which is so peaceable. This work is ideal in that the ending of freedom has two sides. I don’t suppose freedom is a pleasure when given so simply. Contemplating the monumental actions and efforts that led to the results of that image, I feel that human sacrifice and braveness have been one thing that somebody needed to do.

Icebreaker, 2022
Haeeun Lee
Oil on linen, 131 x 155 cm | 51.5 x 61 in

Rhiannon: What are you presently engaged on and do you might have any tasks or exhibitions developing?

Haeeun: Presently, I proceed to current and exhibit works on expressions associated to rhythm and motion, which I’m fascinated with expressing. For vivid, pure colors, I’m going sooner and extra concisely.

Additionally, I typically meet with artists and entrepreneurs from different genres who’ve pursuits in my work to debate how we are able to collaborate to create extra attention-grabbing and precious outcomes.

Music can be deeply associated to the creation of choreography for dance actions, so I often search for performances by trendy dancers with a powerful theatrical nature, similar to my favorite up to date dancers Hofesh Shechtor and Akram Khan. The summary expression of the shifting rhythm in my work may also be used within the performing arts with the assistance of the newest digital expertise. I feel there are numerous issues that may be finished if you happen to suppose that motion expressed in color with summary shapes is carefully associated to the motion of nature. I hear indoors, and the wind, rain, clear air, and lightweight carry pleasure to human happiness and expression, and improve the worth of life. By maximising these parts in pictorial expression, we’re additionally planning an NFT that converts them into digital artwork. Digital artwork permits digital experiences no matter house.

Because the CEO of an AI tech startup, my husband sees the image from completely different angles and we frequently focus on the way forward for laptop expertise and NFTs. We created some digitally transformed NFT arts and uploaded to Opensea platform, burning a number of the etherium. Just a few months in the past a blockchain entrepreneur requested me to take part in his NFT artwork creation occasion and I used to be glad to affix within the occasion. There are increasingly such occasions like bridging digital expertise and conventional artworks and it’s affecting my work a method or one other.

Portray arts are additionally altering with expertise and I’m astonished by the brand new wave of various artworks and alternatives for artists.