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Jae Ko: Aggregation

September 9 - October 8, 2005

Andrew Bae Gallery
300 W. Superior St.
Chicago, IL 60610
tel.: 312-335-8601
hours:
http://www.andrewbaegallery.com

Jae Ko: Aggregation presents nineteen of the Korean-born artist's works, bold geometric forms created using the unlikely combination of adding-machine tape and traditional Asian ink. With these the artist constructs movements of line and mass in orderly, repetitive layers, soft, weighty geometric constructions dyed a dark and impenetrable black, or, as also introduced in this exhibition, a rich crimson red. They are inescapable impressions of contemplative force: like meditation, the tracing of line until the self is lost in contemplation.

The idea of repetition itself seems simple. But these works awe by their aggregation, by how many iterations of wrapping it takes to build up the slender edge of adding-machine tape, something almost without a width, into a work present as a mass in three-dimensional space. Such work gives an impression of contemplative process, the artist patiently wrapping, wrapping, wrapping miles of adding-machine tape, performing a similar gesture growing larger by minute variations; working, as well, with a material of strict, monotonous regularity in terms of its width, yet adding a slight yet significant complexity: that the adding-machine tape strips are offset ever so slightly, to create the wells and valleys that define her thick, softly-curved forms.

The ink in which these pieces are dyed and which transforms the wrapped paper into its final form carries references to meditation as well. Brush painting or sumi-e is one of the disciplines of Zen Buddhist meditation, a demanding exercise requiring absolute concentration in order to express the practitioner's intuitive spirit, free of the dualistic awareness of self. In Jae Ko's black-dyed works, it is as though the rich sable of sumi-e ink has been given dimension and mass in a large, fundamental glyph, more controlled than the images of sumi-e calligraphy, but sharing its spirit nonetheless. The association is further reinforced by shape: the squarish shapes are reminiscent of kana (Asian word-characters), the rectilinear constructions of Chinese imperial seals, or the geometric ornaments of early Korean or Chinese art.

Several of the crimson pieces, such as JK 332 (rolled paper and ink: 36 x 36 x 6 in.: 2005) also carry references to glyphs or written characters. In others, however, Ko exploits a further association of the rich crimson color with fecundity, fertility, even the shocking rich darkness of menstrual blood, by choosing her most biomorphic shapes for several of the red pieces. Twinned whorls suggest ovaries or fallopian tubes, could also be, of course, seed-heads or germinating sprouts; the large form of an oval seems to reference the archetypal yoni of female form. The idea of aggregation thus carries over into the slow patience of organic growth: how plant life grows, for instance, invisible on a daily level, but ultimately visible over a period of many days; the slow progression of how a seed grows in the shell, or the child grows in the womb.

The tight massing of the paper, often accentuated by a wrapping that defines the outer edge, affirms the self-containment of each piece. The final result is an impression of works well-defined by both their intensely saturated color and their overall form: massy, yet soft-edged, with a sense of cushioning to the heaviness. The simplicity of the materials -- rolled paper and ink -- gives a presence of traditional artisanal process, and like the large rope constructions one finds in Buddhist temples there is a sense of ritual object to these large, definite presences.

Jae Ko's work offers solidity and contemplation. Nineteen suspended forms, simple at the outset, but revealing complexity in their innumerable layers. Represented in the collections of the Corcoran Museum of Art, the Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the Washington DC Convention Center, this is the artist's first solo show in Chicago and the Midwest. Jae Ko: Aggregation will be at Andrew Bae Gallery through October 8, 2005.

--Katherine R. Lieber

Katherine Lieber has edited ArtScope.net's Visual Arts reviews since 1998. Ms. Lieber is Editor and Associate Producer for ArtScope.net.