콩나물 <Beans Myself Things>

In-Between Infiltration (Text by Kim Ha-yoon) Yi Soon-joo paints to articulate the precise moments where language hesitates.At first glance, the entities in her works touch upon the unsettling unfamiliarity within our inner selves. Yet, after taking a few breaths and gazing further, we encounter a world of resonance where they overlap and permeate one another without boundaries, safely giving rise to each other. They are transmissive bodies that pull, push, and blend into one another. A "body"—an ecosystem woven from the hybrid connections of animals, plants, objects, machines, and symbols—reveals itself. This "inclusive body," which leaves nothing marginalized, naturally guides us into a time and space that does not flow in a single direction.A tail growing out of an antique tiger-patterned porcelainA zero-gravity Noah's Ark A chair and a small traditional table (soban) that have learned a secret A Buddha with a semiconductor circuit implanted in his head, and a humanoid robot taking a single perilla leaf for a walk Their expressions evoke the surreal representations found in the satirical and humorous iconography of Joseon folk paintings (Minhwa), as well as the hybrid creatures of Hieronymus Bosch. It is only when we lay down the exaggerated narratives of tragedy that the true, original state of humanity is revealed. Perhaps this is why the dépaysement (displacement) coexistence of the entities in her paintings brings a sense of relief rather than estrangement. Her distinctive approach is also evident in how she manipulates her materials. Just as the entities in her works intertwine and meet, the artist applies, erases, cuts, and ages materials of differing natures over a vast span of time, creating a permeable epidermis (skin). This seems like the hidden traces of a clandestine process that allows the entities within the painting to form a mutually transmissive relationship with the outside world. Art critic Jung Hyun once remarked that for Lee Soon-joo, "there seems to exist a kind of 'Artistic Metabolic Activity' that generates and expels the matter and energy used in artistic endeavors." As this suggests, the communion she establishes with the world through her life possesses a sense of fairy-tale wizardry