Resonance with Nature through Sweeping Colors

At the peak of a mountain, considered the holiest area in Tibet, a five-colored flag with scriptures called the rungda waves in the wind. The Tibetan people hear the noise of the flag blowing in the wind as a chanting sound. The purity of their souls allows them to commune with nature. Just as Tibetans communicate with god through the wind, artist Jungran Noh is constantly trying to find unity with nature and reveals her inner world by sweeping colors across a canvas. Since 2004, Noh has been sweeping colors across a flat plane and creating a unique layers of colors. Noh usually starts with a base paint on the surface of the canvas or wooden board, allows the colors to dry, pours another layer on top and sweeps the colors horizontally. Other times, she pours several different colors on the surface at once and when the colors are half dry she sweeps them across the surface using vibrant and wide strokes. The resulting colors that are brought out are sometimes separated from the layered veils of paint and sometimes harmonized by them. Imparting her energetic movements onto the canvas, endless variations of color appear and allow the surface to carry the full energy, weight, and depth of expression. The energy manifests itself as both coarse and expressive, as well as gentle and warm. Noh captures that which is sensed and not sensed within her purely abstract and visual language. Her layered veils of paint appears in many forms ? a glowing sunset, a lonely dawn, the calm and still waves after a storm, the autumnal leaves and the mounted layers of time. Noh's work captures not only the fetters of her own life but also the deep breath given out from her inner thoughts about the nature of creation and extinction. The colors of her work, as art critic Oh Kwang Su wrote, "…display a basic instinct that secretly reveals the emotion of human as being connected with nature yet lacking the self-recognition." Her acts of sweeping colors as "play" is ultimately a process of reflection. Her recent paintings, the "Colors Play ? Sweeping" series, imply the sublime vitality that has further strengthened since her previous works. There is also a greater sense of depth in the contemplative esthetic for nature than before. The colors created by the sweeping motions start off dense and then reveal a ripe beauty, as if the suffering and trials of human life will be swept away. As Lao-Tzu wrote, "Perfect beauty doesn't have any form", Noh has shown not the object that can be represented but a state of nothingness from the texture created by layers of colors. Finally, Noh recovers the pure nature in her life, and the colors express their own existence through the interaction between hues with each color produces its own sound and light. Like the scriptures written in the rungda that are spread through the wind, each color harmonizes with her inner spirit and goes far beyond her work, thereby granting the infinite life force from nature and reminding us of how nature has created us. According to the artist, she will cultivate a color farm. Like farmers plowing the earth, creating beautiful layers of soil in order to plant seeds and harvest crops, Noh also waits for her harvest crop that will be cultivated from the color farm. Human and nature are brought closer together through farming. Like the absolute being that has created all things, Noh wishes to bring forth fruits from her color farm. Thus, her colors reveal the beauty of the sublime.

Soyoung Shin / curator,2009