Lee Jungwoong: Brush and Blue Abstraction

Lee Jungwoong paints pictures of paintbrushes — he paints the thing that paints. These are large-scale, hyper-real images of traditional paintbrushes accompanied by the marks, blotches and splashes that they make. The brush itself is rendered in coloured oil paint, while its mark is in monochromatic ink. The surface is hanji, Korean paper, mounted onto canvas, its absorbent and receptive skin appropriate for capturing the expressive power of the ink. There are two modes of representation going on: the depiction of an object and the depiction of its abstract imprint. We experience the contrast and tension between the controlled handling of the motif and the gestural excitement of the attendant brushmark.