Page 42 - 권숙자 개인전 2025. 10. 1 – 11. 15 권숙자안젤리미술관

Sharing Peace

Shin Hang-seop Art Critic

The charm of painting lies in the ability to see an idealized (理想化) world that is inaccessible to our everyday vision.
Even if this idealized world is a fabricated realm, created by the painter’s personal experience and aesthetic sensibility,
we can still share and sympathize with the pleasure of a world beyond reality. The artist’s imagination offers us a time
and space that can overcome and transcend various real-world difficulties. For us, painting is an eternally open world.
This is because, based on the idealized world created by the artist, our individual dreams can also expand infinitely.

Kwon Sook-ja’s work guides us to dream of precisely such an ideal world. So, what is an ideal world for us? In a word,
it signifies a world free from self-interest, and therefore free from all greed. Furthermore, it is a place where there is
only a peaceful life where all things are equal, with no human superiority or animal inferiority. From the perspective
of human affairs, often marked by discrimination and strife, it is definitely a world of dreams.

Yes, her work aims for an ideal world. As such, it is free from all realistic constraints. Her work is detached from the con-
cepts of realistic time and space. Is this why? Her world of art shows us the scene of Paradise, our eternal ideal realm.
However, the land of peace she aims for is not a world of dreams completely isolated from reality. This is because the
idealized world she constructs is based on the reality that surrounds her own life.

The central theme she constructs in her work is peace, and the subject is always nature. It is not a world dominated
by humans.

She believes that a life that follows God’s providence—a natural life—is the true Ideal Realm (理想境).
She finds suitable places for this Ideal Realm within reality. The brief memory, from over a decade ago, of realizing
that Heaven was no separate place when she saw the spectacular flight of white birds in Cheongdeok Village, Yongin,
Gyeonggi Province, where she lives, and in the riverside village of Umang (憂忘 - “Forgetting Sorrow”) by the Nakdong
River, gave her the belief that the ideal could be realized even in reality, not just in a dream. This realistic background
indicates that her artistic world is not merely a simple combination of fantasy.

Of course, these subjects and content are idealized by a non-realistic formal language—that is, a surreal and fantastic
arrangement of elements. In some ways, it is reminiscent of the free composition of children’s drawings, where a sense
of reality is not a concern. This manner of arranging elements reflects a will to overcome reality.

The formal interpretation of her subjects and objects is also non-representational. It follows a simple and concise
sense of form, similar to that of children’s drawings. Thus, the overall impression of her work has a strong Naïve Art
sensibility. By transforming or distorting forms into simplified and abbreviated images, she creates a straightforward
impression. At least, the elements that appear in her work are extremely clear in their intent. Visual understanding is
lucid because detailed expression is omitted and simplified. Furthermore, the color imagery is stylized with primary
and secondary colors.

42