Landscape; Embodying the Sensibility and Memories of the Era
- The Significance and Expanding Possibilities of Contemporary Landscape Painting through Lee Jang Woo’s Works
Director Dai Shik Yim, Artertain
본문
Landscapes constantly exist alongside our daily lives. They might appear as scenes of nature, urban skylines, or occasionally, vague childhood alleyways lingering in our memories. However, landscapes are not mere backdrops; they serve as mediums and devices encapsulating the sensibility and memories of the era. A landscape transcends its physical appearance, reinterpreted and perceived uniquely by the viewer’s personal emotions and experiences. Within this context, landscapes remain powerful artistic languages within Korean contemporary art, especially in painting.
Painting typically begins with the act of drawing. Fundamental questions such as "what was painted?" and "why was it painted?" form the core of interpretation and appreciation. Although these questions might seem straightforward, clearly addressing them allows us the clearest possible understanding of an artist’s work. Thus, painting is the most important genre of visual art that can draw out the artist’s inner stories from simple questions or, at times, allow infinite immersion into their world, and it is also the starting point of all contemporary art. Therefore, it is necessary to emphasize once again that painting still holds value and meaning in the analysis of visual art. Painting continues to hold significant value and meaning in visual art analysis. Within this realm, landscape painting undeniably occupies a strong and stable position in contemporary painting, given its prominence even excluding historical context.
Lee Jang Woo inherits this tradition of landscape painting, while also reinterpreting it in sensorial and emotional terms, thereby revealing how we can perceive, respond to, and remember landscapes today through painting. In his art, landscapes are not merely “seen,” but “felt,” not merely existent but “remembered.” Disregarding ordinary cognition, Lee intertwines memories invoked by landscapes, the sensibility of the moment, and present sensations experienced in front of the canvas. This complex layering of sensory perceptions does not simply recreate a singular scene but establishes a collective space –landscape- as a site for merging and communicating the sensibilities and memories of an era.
This approach is deeply linked to the contemporary concept of “Affect.” Affect refers to the subtle sensory tremors, the instinctive bodily or emotional reactions experienced before they are articulated into language. Lee Jang Woo’s landscapes communicate through the medium of affect. His work engages not only visual perception but also stimulates viewers’ unconscious, overlapping remembered landscapes, potentially familiar yet elusive, with current emotions. This demonstrates landscapes as emotional terrains of the era, places harboring affective responses preceding clear emotions. Lee’s method—layering directly experienced landscapes with personal emotional reinterpretations—expands the expressive potential of landscapes in contemporary painting.
His painting technique also supports this affective approach. Lee deeply understands the physical qualities of oil paint, and actively incorporating them into his overall compositional structure. Thickly layered oil paint on his canvases forms color masses, which, in themselves, compose a scene of the landscape. These color masses transmit sensations beyond their physical thickness through their combination of light and shadow, specific colors, and textures. The color masses that harmonize the overall landscape individually generate their own formative language, and when seen in parts, they evoke an image of abstract paintings composed of color and gesture. This evokes the illusion that numerous abstract paintings come together to form one grand landscape painting. It also offers insight, through Lee's work, into how the historical trajectory of contemporary painting may have provided momentum for the development of abstract and expressionist concepts and techniques. Moreover, the materiality in his works transcends mere representation, functioning instead as mediums expanding emotions and senses. The thick layers of paint applied to the surface suggest the flow of time inherent in his work, while the light and shadow cast over them evoke spatial responsiveness.
In essence, Lee Jang Woo’s paintings visualize not emotions themselves, but the sensory tremors preceding emotions—affect. His paintings evoke new tactile responses in senses fatigued by the consumption of digital images, creating a point where a return to materiality coexists with contemporary sensibility. This demonstrates the possibility that landscape painting is not merely a traditional genre, but one that can still function with contemporary meaning.
His paintings also offer unique perspectives on the era encapsulated by landscapes. His belief is that "the most commonplace landscapes most completely embody daily life.” This perspective begins with the recognition that landscapes are not merely assigned the role of nature's backdrop, but are instead perceived as spaces where the emotions and memories of people living through their times have been and continue to be accumulated. In other words, landscapes are the very junction where past and present, the time and space of memory, and the time and space of present experience coexist—and it is through the language of painting that the myriad traces of sensibility embedded within them are restored.
Travel serves as a crucial motif in his practice. His landscapes are not simple records of places but embodied sensations gathered during travels. For him, travel is not a movement through space, but an act of tracing the emotions and memories of an era; and the landscapes collected during his journeys are fragments of sensibility stored along that journey. In this sense, his landscapes function as “memory storages” and “frameworks for emotional discovery,” with painting serving as a prism to record and reinterpret emotions. Thus, for him, painting is not just representational but a sensory refractor, or a device dispersing emotional spectra. Thus, through this prism-like painting, we are able to experience a spectrum of the artist’s diverse memories within a single scene. This becomes a point where we can assess how deeply and diversely contemporary landscape painting can convey the sensibility of the times through the communication of individual subjective emotion.
Historically viewing contemporary landscape painting, traditional landscapes objectively represented nature, whereas modern landscapes increasingly center subjective emotions, sensations, and social interpretations. Just as 19th-century Impressionism approached nature through light and sensations, 21st-century landscape painting reconstructs it around personal emotions and memories. Particularly, Lee Jang Woo’s practice reads the era anew within a wide spectrum of sensory perception, understands directly the affect of the times with its painterly engagement, suggests the possibility of understanding it directly through painting; thereby reaffirming the sustainability and contemporary function of painting.
Ultimately, Lee Jang Woo’s landscape paintings record the sensibility of the era, and are a sensory topography that visualizes emotions and memories; they are also an emotional space of transmission that connects the era and humanity, emotion and art through landscape. His work proves that landscape painting is by no means a genre of the past, and shows that the sensibility and affect contained within it remain valid today. This trajectory reaffirms that landscape painting can still fully function as an artistic language capable of delicately capturing the sensibilities of our era.
Painting typically begins with the act of drawing. Fundamental questions such as "what was painted?" and "why was it painted?" form the core of interpretation and appreciation. Although these questions might seem straightforward, clearly addressing them allows us the clearest possible understanding of an artist’s work. Thus, painting is the most important genre of visual art that can draw out the artist’s inner stories from simple questions or, at times, allow infinite immersion into their world, and it is also the starting point of all contemporary art. Therefore, it is necessary to emphasize once again that painting still holds value and meaning in the analysis of visual art. Painting continues to hold significant value and meaning in visual art analysis. Within this realm, landscape painting undeniably occupies a strong and stable position in contemporary painting, given its prominence even excluding historical context.
Lee Jang Woo inherits this tradition of landscape painting, while also reinterpreting it in sensorial and emotional terms, thereby revealing how we can perceive, respond to, and remember landscapes today through painting. In his art, landscapes are not merely “seen,” but “felt,” not merely existent but “remembered.” Disregarding ordinary cognition, Lee intertwines memories invoked by landscapes, the sensibility of the moment, and present sensations experienced in front of the canvas. This complex layering of sensory perceptions does not simply recreate a singular scene but establishes a collective space –landscape- as a site for merging and communicating the sensibilities and memories of an era.
This approach is deeply linked to the contemporary concept of “Affect.” Affect refers to the subtle sensory tremors, the instinctive bodily or emotional reactions experienced before they are articulated into language. Lee Jang Woo’s landscapes communicate through the medium of affect. His work engages not only visual perception but also stimulates viewers’ unconscious, overlapping remembered landscapes, potentially familiar yet elusive, with current emotions. This demonstrates landscapes as emotional terrains of the era, places harboring affective responses preceding clear emotions. Lee’s method—layering directly experienced landscapes with personal emotional reinterpretations—expands the expressive potential of landscapes in contemporary painting.
His painting technique also supports this affective approach. Lee deeply understands the physical qualities of oil paint, and actively incorporating them into his overall compositional structure. Thickly layered oil paint on his canvases forms color masses, which, in themselves, compose a scene of the landscape. These color masses transmit sensations beyond their physical thickness through their combination of light and shadow, specific colors, and textures. The color masses that harmonize the overall landscape individually generate their own formative language, and when seen in parts, they evoke an image of abstract paintings composed of color and gesture. This evokes the illusion that numerous abstract paintings come together to form one grand landscape painting. It also offers insight, through Lee's work, into how the historical trajectory of contemporary painting may have provided momentum for the development of abstract and expressionist concepts and techniques. Moreover, the materiality in his works transcends mere representation, functioning instead as mediums expanding emotions and senses. The thick layers of paint applied to the surface suggest the flow of time inherent in his work, while the light and shadow cast over them evoke spatial responsiveness.
In essence, Lee Jang Woo’s paintings visualize not emotions themselves, but the sensory tremors preceding emotions—affect. His paintings evoke new tactile responses in senses fatigued by the consumption of digital images, creating a point where a return to materiality coexists with contemporary sensibility. This demonstrates the possibility that landscape painting is not merely a traditional genre, but one that can still function with contemporary meaning.
His paintings also offer unique perspectives on the era encapsulated by landscapes. His belief is that "the most commonplace landscapes most completely embody daily life.” This perspective begins with the recognition that landscapes are not merely assigned the role of nature's backdrop, but are instead perceived as spaces where the emotions and memories of people living through their times have been and continue to be accumulated. In other words, landscapes are the very junction where past and present, the time and space of memory, and the time and space of present experience coexist—and it is through the language of painting that the myriad traces of sensibility embedded within them are restored.
Travel serves as a crucial motif in his practice. His landscapes are not simple records of places but embodied sensations gathered during travels. For him, travel is not a movement through space, but an act of tracing the emotions and memories of an era; and the landscapes collected during his journeys are fragments of sensibility stored along that journey. In this sense, his landscapes function as “memory storages” and “frameworks for emotional discovery,” with painting serving as a prism to record and reinterpret emotions. Thus, for him, painting is not just representational but a sensory refractor, or a device dispersing emotional spectra. Thus, through this prism-like painting, we are able to experience a spectrum of the artist’s diverse memories within a single scene. This becomes a point where we can assess how deeply and diversely contemporary landscape painting can convey the sensibility of the times through the communication of individual subjective emotion.
Historically viewing contemporary landscape painting, traditional landscapes objectively represented nature, whereas modern landscapes increasingly center subjective emotions, sensations, and social interpretations. Just as 19th-century Impressionism approached nature through light and sensations, 21st-century landscape painting reconstructs it around personal emotions and memories. Particularly, Lee Jang Woo’s practice reads the era anew within a wide spectrum of sensory perception, understands directly the affect of the times with its painterly engagement, suggests the possibility of understanding it directly through painting; thereby reaffirming the sustainability and contemporary function of painting.
Ultimately, Lee Jang Woo’s landscape paintings record the sensibility of the era, and are a sensory topography that visualizes emotions and memories; they are also an emotional space of transmission that connects the era and humanity, emotion and art through landscape. His work proves that landscape painting is by no means a genre of the past, and shows that the sensibility and affect contained within it remain valid today. This trajectory reaffirms that landscape painting can still fully function as an artistic language capable of delicately capturing the sensibilities of our era.
