South Korean artist Yi Yi Jeong Eun’s oil paintings currently on show at Hong Kong’s Ora-Ora gallery are visually striking with their textured impasto – thickly laid lines of paint – and lively embellishments of varying colours and depths.
Such abstract, seemingly free-flowing images are more than just an amalgamation of elements pleasing to the eye. They are the artist’s attempt to depict the essence of nature and required hours of preparation.
“When I first started to paint nature, I used to approach it as a re-enactment. But what I really want to convey now is the internal essence of nature and not the exterior,” she says.
“I’m trying to paint the energy that the objects have and not the objects themselves.”
Going by the name Yi Yi – Yi Yi Jeong Eun is her professional name – the artist draws inspiration from nature, from its most grandiose to most intimate settings.
Pieces like There, On Being Alive came from a visit to the towering Taebaek Mountain in Gangwon-do – a national park in South Korea famous for its diverse ecological landscape. Others, like There, Breaking Through The Ground, depict the flowers and shrubs that her young art students brought her.
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Regardless of the subject matter’s scale, she tries to convey what she thinks of as the essence of nature that lives in even the smallest of specimens, she says.
“What I admire the most in nature are plants, because although they might look so weak, they always push through barriers. They don’t die after getting stomped on so many times. They stay alive even in extreme environments like the freezing cold – all with such seemingly delicate skin.
“When I see that, I really get the feeling that while we may be able to tear plants apart by force, the true inner strength they have is incredible.”
Her brush strokes of different hues, lengths, thicknesses and shapes that are applied with different speeds and intensities are her attempt to express the diversity that exists in nature.
“I want to show people the various forces of nature in one canvas. When I go into nature, I see that there are small and large plants that move differently, for instance when the wind blows. Plants with heavier leaves move more gently whereas those with lighter leaves will move much faster.
“I try to express those through different brush strokes, colours and all the things that can be done through an oil painting.”
Nature has been the core theme of her recent artworks, but previous works were quite the opposite.
Before, the main objects in her works were towering boxes filled with material goods. People in her works would either be climbing up ladders to stack boxes ever higher, or carrying full boxes, chasing a feeling of contentment that arises purely from material consumption.
Back then, she drew inspiration from going to Costco, the American wholesale supermarket chain that entered the Korean market in the 1990s. To Yi Yi, who grew up in Korea, the image of endless crates full of products made by big brand names was a materialistic excess that was addictive.
“I was obsessed with that atmosphere and just kept going back to Costco again and again.”
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The transformative moment for her was when she visited Taebaek Mountain in the 2010s. For someone who had spent her whole life in an urban environment, it was another moment of shocking unfamiliarity that she wanted to keep seeking.
“At first I didn’t realise why I was so drawn to nature. But since I just start creating art when I like something so much, I started painting it. Later I was able to understand why. I am drawn so much to the liveliness of nature.”
Looking at pictures of nature and being in nature are fundamentally different. Likewise, looking at Yi Yi’s work through a digital screen, and seeing the real things, are quite distinct.
Those thick lines of paint – sometimes 10 layers deep – and the liveliness of texture embedded in each of her pieces can only be fully appreciated by experiencing the works in person.
“Alive, Alive, Oh!”, Ora-Ora Gallery, 105-107, Barrack Block, Tai Kwun, 10 Hollywood Rd, Central. Mon-Fri 10am-7pm. Sat-Sun 11am-7pm. Until December 10.