LEE JIN WOO
Untitled.
Hanji paper and wood charcoal, 2018. 505x735 mm; 19x28 inches. Signed and dated in felt-tip pen and ink, verso. Provenance: Michel Soskine, Inc., Madrid, with the label; Estate of Bruce Cohen, Washington, D.C.Born in Seoul, Woo (born 1959) now lives and works in France. According to Galerie Maria Lund, Paris, who has exhibited his work frequently, "His work process is long, physically demanding and repetitive, like a prayer recited over and over again. The artist’s works bring together strata of traditional Hanji paper and layers of wood charcoal. Sometimes pigments, especially blues, are added. Woo builds a space and time, a world of light; a universe where even storms and breezes are noiseless. In front of these rectangles and squares of matter, both rustic and refined, dense and mute, an original universal manifests itself. Arte povera, minimalism, relation to void . . . Woo’s work falls in line--with his specific signature--into Korean contemporary tradition. The heritage of the generation of Dansaekwha artists intersects here with Woo’s distinctive and specific urge for immersion, absorption, and even disappearance."