Lot 1617: CHA MYUNG HI

CHA MYUNG HI
(B. 1947)
Soaring; & Sound
Soaring: signed in Korean; dated '2005' (lower left)
Sound: signed in Korean; dated '2003' (lower right)
two charcoal and acrylic on paper
167.2 x 129.7 cm. (65 7/8 x 51 in.); & 189 x 120 cm. (74 3/8 x 47 1/4 in.)
Painted in 2003 & 2005 (2)

Cha Myung-Hi, Cha Myung-Hi, Seoul, Korea, 2005 (illustrated, pp. 67 & 71).

By condensing the color spectrum into a monochrome, Cha Myung Hi ponders the potency of compositional and textural aesthetics, an outcome that is determined purely through her insight and integrity which in return produces a transcendent naturalistic rendering that exceeds the painting and become an infinite landscape. By utilizing lines as the purest and fundamental geometric form, Cha presents a strong philosophy of Oriental painting by converting her inner soul on to the painting.

As the fine lines in Soaring (Lot 1617) ascend from its deep pool of soft charcoal, it rises in variance with their submissive etching, exhibiting a sense of selfless inhabitation of the canvas space. The tonal gradient of dark bottom to lighter in height provides an expansion of the painting with its altitude, generating an overall atmospheric stillness, where Cha's spiritually driven markings gently float, slowly dissolving into the grey cosmos. The simplicity of her painting utters her visual and conceptual purity through expressive application of engraved texture and its nuance; delivering a wide variety of intentions, emotions and meanings. Cha endeavors to negate control over her pictorial events in her deep engagement in the romance of its spontaneity and abstraction, penetrating the paper with rhythmic staccatos in Sound (Lot 1617). If Soaring conducts a tender melody of a fading landscape to exhibit a sense of transcendence, Sound emits passionate burst of brisk musical notes to accentuate a sense of presence. As Cha endeavors to provide a declarative emphasis to the significance in understanding the process of producing artworks as the vital part of understanding how the painting serves as a work of art, she creates a work that embodies performance, spirituality and wisdom, knowingly roaming within the flexible and universal characteristics of abstraction that is deficient of narrative statement, creating paintings that allows us to enjoy in the comfort of our subjective appreciation and freedom.