I always see books on the shelves when I go to somebody’s house. I can imagine their favorites and their recent interests through those books. The curiosity to other people and the love for books led me to draw bookshelves in my surroundings. Books must desire to be held by somebody, and they are getting ready and wait. It is a duty and a job of books.
I sense books are breathing and have souls when I enter a books space which is packed with infinite ideas and feelings, and I am also nervous in front of books lined up by a rule. I keep drawing silence and mixed emotion in a limited space as a bookshelf.
The image of painting is based on photographs. Taking photographs of bookshelves around me and KYOBO(Korean franchise book store), I paint from those images.
Names on book covers - Pablo Picasso，Marc Chagall，and Henri Matisse – are the names of great painters in art history which everyone has heard once.
Books in my paintings are not merely printed materials: I hope they hold time and history by encountering great masters’ names and inspire the audience to imagine values of the painters and their art works. There is someone among the audience who already keeps the book, and her/his time transfers to a new moment experiencing the parallel world.
The sensation of a huge world meeting books in bookshelves is the space which I eager to create.
The constructive tension and uncertain dark space of vertical books whose sizes and titles are unknown in my paintings give impression to my audience by stimulating their imagination like they are entering vast bookshelves, and I hope everyone to love his/her ordinary spaces behind the life.
Jeong Ja Young
정자영