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Jiwon Son: Aggregates

June 3 - July 31, 2005

Byron Roche Gallery
750 N. Franklin St., Ste 105
Chicago, IL 60610
tel.: 312-654-0144
hours: Tue-Sat 11a-6p
http://www.byronroche.com/

Jiwon Son: Aggregates focuses primarily on new paintings by the artist. However, two of Son's earlier pieces are also on exhibition, showing the stepping-off point of this current body of work. In these earlier works Son created -- by hand, with intent detail -- paintings drawn from the appearance of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean silk brocades. Repetitive and soothing, the hand-done nature of these works made them seem 'a devotion' in the traditional sense, and the two on exhibit show the mesmerizing quality of the precision and scale of the repetition, as well as Son's exquisite subtlety in reproducing the textile-like sheen.

The series of new paintings in Jiwon Son: Aggregates are a departure, evolving from this prior work, yet taking it into an area that dissolves some of the taut force of the earlier paintings. Aggregate 05M-C206 (oil on panel: 20 x 20 x 2.5 in.: 2005) moves the fragile detail of the textile pattern into the background. The foreground erupts with blots suggestive of nature's organic shapelessness, the bloom of mold or mildew interrupting and overtaking the tiny floral rhythms. In other works, such as Aggregate #04M-Z006 (oil on panel (12" x 12" x 2.5 in.: 2004) Son has omitted the textile patterns altogether and offers up the blots and runnels of the organic shapes themselves.

As the gallery notes, Son's work is based in part on the precepts of Ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement: "its imposition of orderly ideals on nature, but with mindfulness of the subjects' organic origins." Yet the more extreme of these explorations wander far afield. Part of the interest of Son's earlier work was the intense discipline inherent in it, the restraint involved in painting with such precision: the earlier paintings seem to vibrate with intensely repressed energies, even more impressive when one is aware of the meticulous working method of the artist. In these new paintings, the mildew-like blots on the patterns add a different and still valid impression, an introduction of a theme of decay and shapelessness. But -- take away the underlying pattern entirely, and the blots and blotches alone are too vague. The discipline whose tensions were part of the coherence of Son's earlier work seems to dissipate in a too-thorough exploration of randomness and spontaneity.

One has to resist wanting an artist to stay the same. Evolution and experimentation are what keeps the work alive. And it is always interesting to see what directions they head in. In this latest round of Aggregates, Son has stepped off into a new direction which, though based on principles similar to those intrinsic to her earlier work, seems to have a way to go before it fully realizes them in its execution. Still, the journey of artistic evolution itself is of interest. Jiwon Son: Aggregates will be at Byron Roche Gallery through July 31, 2005.

--Katherine Rook Lieber

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