Schneider Museum of Art
Two works from Younhee Paik's
Invitation To Rest series
Intimate Revelations
International Women's Exhibition (continued: Page 7)
Younhee Paik
I have known Younhee and her work for over 20 years. In spite of the many changes which are bound to happen, her work never lost a surreal quality, one that can be associated with images of dreams, of fantasy landscapes- vast and other worldly.
The installation she contributes to this exhibition derives from a series started a few years ago, a time of great vulnerability for her, a time when tender thoughts were focused on her mother who lay ill in an antiseptic, white hospital room. She felt she wanted to do something to change the bleak, cold atmosphere, to make it more bearable, more beautiful, to console the mother and help her by surrounding her with something other than medical equipment and instruments associated with pain.
She wished her mother could look into the night sky with its infinite galaxies and shining stars which would, more eloquently than words, describe what lay beyond human experience.
She started painting such nightscapes on flexible cloth that would be hung above her mother’s bed and all around the room. She was hoping to bring a measure of relief, by erasing what seemed so final, and replacing it with visions of infinite and timeless light, extending life into the dark mysteries of unknown space where future could meet past, in the realm of the spirits. She wanted to envelop the narrow bed in a tent of dreams, to obscure the suffering, transporting the woman that gave her life beyond the limitations of this earth, beyond pain, into the firmament of dark nights where all journeys end in light.
After the paintings were done she called the series, Invitations to Rest.
Josine Ianco Starrels
More Intimate Revelations:
Pg. 1: Yolanda Andrade Pg. 2: Belkis Ayon
Pg. 3: Christel Dillbohner Pg. 4: Mari Omori/Maritta Tapanainen
Pg. 5: Kyung Sun Cho/Theodora Varney Jones/Echiko Ohira Pg. 6: Sosa Joseph
