The exhibition by Song Yun Ju, subtitled Feast of Characters, feels full of vivid energy, especially when compared to her previous works (since her first exhibition in 2002) which were mainly sculpted with fabric form. Created by scratches and drawings made after several layers of pigment have been applied on paper, a variety of stories of human life unfold through their images, focused around depictions of feasts and events, along with her experiments into background and form. They have a diverse range of levels, from the geometric to the organic, from vague traces made with some of the paint removed, to three-dimensionalitiess that seem about to jump out of the canvas. In this exhibition, it is noteworthy that Song has begun to incorporate characters and narrative within the works, through themes relating to rituals that are meaningful as significant points of an individual’s history. What makes the narrative possible are the linear elements like written letters, which were found as a response against the type of tough materials found within murals or seal engravings, instead of the lightness of brushes. Above all else, the line has an indispensable role within Eastern painting, and has a notable encounter with the pictograph from ancient Eastern times within Song’s recent work. At first the figures of the main characters organizing feasts were made of slightly cut paper bundles, and their forms were taken from the archaic shape of 子 (Ja, the Chinese character meaning son).  Fabric balls that resemble a group of people from different generation are noticeable as a kind of three-dimensional shape bulging out from a lightly painted flat surface.

The bundles of lines she had been creating since her first exhibition under the theme ‘Background 素’ (素 - So, the Chinese character meaning white) with scratches on a thickly layered surface, began to stand up from the base of the works to make forms through the series ‘素(White)-象(Image)’ in her third solo exhibition at Gallery Gong in 2006. However, instead of having concrete and obvious shape, it was ‘informal form’ (the subtitle of the exhibition) that incorporated botanical and zoologial elements. ‘Informal form’ went through several steps of transformation, over and over, to the level of yielding an atmosphere of the grotesque and unworldly, like a spaceship or alien. At this upcoming exhibition, the possibilities within the diverse forms created from the bundles of lines are applied to human life. The bundles that are knotted or unraveled are metaphors of the human emotions of joy, anger, sorrow and happiness. The addition of characters to the diverse forms brings about added resonances, whilst the ambivalence of canvas demands multiple interpretations from the audience. The characters were not just arranged orderly in an ornate way, but also tightly connected to their contents. Therefore the tradition of combining written characters and painting is given a new context. Human figures visualized with signs and seal characters, as the first level of pictographic characters, are deeply engaged.and inseparably absorbed into each other. This absorption makes the harmony between form and meaning more rich and intense. Engraved human-like form that has a bumpy surface with lively wire line stroke has a special three-dimensionality, while drawn characters have a unique kind of vagueness, with only traces left behind after being rubbed by sandpaper. This brings the sense of Korean painting with deep depth. 

The materiality gained through dozens of brushstrokes made by layers and folds of pigment and oxhide glue may be related to human qualities such as emotion or physical traits, and this materiality goes well with the unique sensations yielded from a background full of calligraphic images. Diverse patterns are mingled in one canvas, and the self-made models of characters render a sense of reality in their diverse forms. The first floor of the exhibition hall has seven works with subjects including the day of birth, first birthday, wedding day, sixtieth birthday, and funeral. The second floor has six works from the ‘素 (White)- Ravelling’ series as well as five prints and drawings. In Born Together, the two forms placed side by side seem like twins, with slightly different yet mostly similarly arranged folds. The folds in the bodies of the twins lead us to think of the process of an organism attaining each trait according to the mechanism of a cell membrane folding during the creation of a fetus. In the upper part, Song painted twenty-three sets of human chromosome. The codification of human beings corresponds with this genetic code. It is the color of a newly sprung leaf that wraps around the two units that resemble clones, and a map of life that is brought to light by scientific technology. The First Choice Ⅰ depicts Doljabee (a traditional Korean event where a one-year old baby makes a choice that will reflect one’s future by selecting from a range of items such as money, thread, pen, etc.). What lies in the upper part is a mixture of things that appear on the table in this first birthday feast. The golf ball chosen by the one-year old reflects today’s tendency for people to yearn for luxury and leisure in addition to longer life expectancy or a successful career. The objects that appear, as well as the human figures, are clad with thick-layered materiality, related to the transitional level of signs and forms.

Marriage addresses the momentum of newly made human relationships that come from the encounters between a man and a woman. Folds, nodes, and picturesque characters are designed to reveal a complicated diagram of factors which marriage should take into consideration. In Feast for Sixtieth Birthday, CheonGan (天干, the ten celestial signs used in the calendar) is arranged in the upper part, JiJi (地支, the twelve factors of the sexagenary cycle) in the lower, which symbolizes the return of the year of MuJa (戊子, the twenty-fifth year of the sexagenary cycle). There are other behaviors that express joy while dancing around the sixty-year old man. The artist stated that the dancing folks were images of frills on the sleeves of the widely unfolded arms, from the seal character of 舞 (mu, the Chinese character meaning to dance). The letters, half shown and arranged in a circle, depict a scene where an aged man feels playful with the characters. Oriental Cycle symbolizes the return of the sixtieth birth year. The character Ro (老) is drawn like an old man with a stick, as if hastily heading toward his destiny like the ticking of a clock. The bundle of fabric with its threads unraveled a lot more than the other works symbolically shows the meaning of getting old, along with its grey-tone background. Character, form, and color combine to endow each work with symbolic depth. Return to Heaven describes a funeral. The people that have been portrayed with rambled strings capture the meanings of life succinctly. Death is described as a process of returning to heaven, after cutting the strings attached to the current life. Characters that symbolize the myriad of human emotions fly toward the sky as well. 

Paintings, drawings, and prints exhibited on the second floor have a common bond with previously exhibited work. The series 素(White)-Ravelling leads the viewer to imagine various other shapes, due to its thread lump silhouette, and the series Making-Image are in its transformative process to something unknown like a ‘fountain tree’ or ‘golden tree.’ Forms created with scratches on thick layers of pigments resemble descriptive outlines of human beings, and at the same time dynamically move according to their own rhythm and energy. Description and expression at the same time rather than to be perfectly match with the object to be referred to. The success of the visual is in gaining attention, and yields explosive effects when combined with autonomous colors, as it does within the series Making-Image. However, the linear elements within Song’s work can’t get enough energy unless they are involved with subsequent concept. Her work overlays the two practices of drawing and writing. It is neither for the purpose of simple communication, nor for merely being pleasing on the eyes. Codes get flesh, and images gain the armature of concept. The codes are incomplete, hardly decipherable, though not an illusion that will disappear into the air as just a fancy for the eyes. These ambiguous entities in their transitional level, belonging neither to reality, nor to the visionary, are moving elsewhere. Images that are attached with concepts have structural homogeneity, but in this context ‘structure is not something static, but a structuralization itself’ (Barthes). 

These images, as stated by Roland Barthes, can be said to be ‘a generative process of systems rather than a depository of a system.’ This generation leads to meanings that are not fixed, keeping them endlessly delayed, and extended. Barthes adds that art cannot exist without the extension of meanings, with communication left alone. The delineation of marks which outline subjects reflects images intended by the painter, highlighting the result created by impressions of hand movement. They are neither written, nor printed, but engraved. The resulting work, after passing through the multi-layered surfaces, appeals to a sense of tactility as well as a sense of vision. The characters in Song’s work, that have brought forth meanings and images are noticeable, as they are pictographic characters in archetypal forms, before being fixed as visually abstract forms. In here, there is not the gap between sounds or the body that occurs afterwards within abstract characters. This gap is typical in phonetic systems like the alphabet or Hangeul (the Korean writing system). Phonetics, as stated in On the Origin of Language by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), are made through the disassembly of voice into a certain number of basic elements according to traits in articulation, thus making it possible to compose all the necessary words and syllables. This kind of approach for writing is not to draw words but to analyze them. Therefore phonetics is evaluated as scientific.

In contrast to this, pictographic characters from the ancient times are a site where a lot more sensations are engaged simultaneously. Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) points out in The Gutenberg Galaxy that Chinese characters are not distinguished into word and visual code. According to him, when characters are written with pictographs or semantic symbols, it is close to taking a snapshot of a scene or multiple situations in individual or social contexts. Compared to this, the scientific realm of phonetics is commonly disintegrated into form and meaning. What is implied in phonetics is a possibility to repeat, namely the ability to copy. It was since the appearance of a phonetic system that abstracts meaning from sound, and converts sound into visual code, that the modern skills (formal logic) of statement could be created. For this reason, the alphabet – as one of the codes that associated random signs with random sounds –gained a power of its own, as a result of the way it detaches visual sense from an intricate body of five senses. It has brought forth dichotomy, perspective, a closed structure of representation, the point of view of the subject, etc., in sequence. The pictographs Song has chosen incorporate the resonance of a multi-dimensional language that belongs to an era before scientific signs were established. The artist almost consciously commanded a variety of techniques on one canvas, and intentionally resisted the reduction of their codes into something cold and abstract. In this process, the codes are transformed and varied in multiple ways.

In particular, the tactility of steel wire that breaks up the air implies the whole interaction that is incorporated within humane experience. The tactile characters within the work are imbued with a physical rhythm, intonation and emotion, which are sublimely converted into a feast or gala that inspires the integral sensations of being human. The characters within the work are free from the typical functions of phonetics that dominate a modern era of explicitness, conformity, and continuity. They turn into a non-characteristic style of implicitness, broadness, and discontinuity. They break up the linear order of modern characters, and become harmonized within the canvas. Therefore, Song’s work has a symbolic resonance like a mysterious papyrus that waits to be deciphered again and again, instead of remaining as a still-cut image. The works on the second floor that have direct relevance with previously exhibited work are characterized by shapes like a funnel or inverted triangle. Seeming like entangled bobbins, they have lines criss-crossing densely in the center, thereby creating a barely recognizable silhouette in their outline. As if exploding at an uncertain point, the linear shapes seem to grow. As the lines can lead themselves into innumerable shapes, the combination of these shapes has a great deal of fertility. The crouched lumps, as something potential turn into something real over time.

The potential and the real serve as two forces within Song’s work. Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) states in Difference and Repetition that the two parts of being potential and being real organize each other within an everlasting circuit. They are not in contrast. Deleuze even states that something potential should be defined by some rigid parts that constitute substantial objects. Structures are substantiality of something potential. Artwork is hidden in a certain potentiality. Artwork only draws into itself a certain structure that is completely indentified through things like undifferentiated, potential fetus-like elements in generation. The realization of something with potential is accompanied with the creation of lines that are ready to diverge. The difference and repetition within something potential brings forth a movement towards realization, and differentiation as creation. The silhouettes, unraveling from the edge with time, or rising and explosively breaking up, lead the viewer to think of the process of a life being gestated and developed, which is quite natural to all things. As a seed does, something potential incorporates an abundant substantiality within itself.

However, the movement of lines that start from similar foundations is inclined to diversity, rather than returning to homogeneity. Genes in Song’s work resist the production of identical humanbeings, and a stream of lines deny conforming patterns. As Difference and Repetition suggests, it is not a repetition of the same thing, rather through difference, divergence, or differentiation that the potential is turned into reality. The continuous movement heads toward endless discord – fights against the sameness of representation – and is full of difference. The context presumes a specific realm of time and space which is distinct and somewhat archetypal in its inherent sense. The high density lines that are engraved on a substance serve as a rudimentary engine to turn the potential into the real. Differentiation takes place along these lines, with an implicit possibility of creating other lines. Lines are cracks in Song’s work. An artwork begins from a certain crack that an artist can’t fill and develops around it (Deleuze). Lines distinguish one from another, and turn into folds. Folds are made through expanson and reproduction. Folds develop their own potential through folding and unfolding. All of the subjects in Song’s work converge and diverge indefinitely through the folds.