SAVOURING SILENCE
SAVOURING SILENCE
Woo Jung Ghil4 Feb - 14 Mar 2025
PRESS RELEASE
“My process makes me think of paintings as being alive.”
Woo Jung Ghil’s paintings are meditative odysseys into the depths of the human psyche, each work reflecting a search for mental clarity and stillness. Through her practice, she visualises an “ideal state of mind” – a space or sanctuary of introspection, where the existential burdens humans carry, particularly the false sense of infinitude often attached to life, dissolves into quietude. For Ghil, the act of painting transcends aesthetics. Each piece reflects one’s inner realm and the subtle interplay of vulnerability, aspiration and hope.
At the heart of Ghil’s practice lies an almost ritualistic approach to layering, building her compositions through thin washes of paint, allowing subtle shifts in transparency and pigments to emerge. This deliberate practice mirrors her desire to reconcile the chaos of existence with the search for her most authentic expression of being. Ghil’s sensitivity to colour imbues her paintings with an almost tangible energy, each hue responds to her mood and the act of creation. The paintings themselves bear the imprints of her gestures and emotions. The delicate balance of control and intuition permeats her paintings with a spirit that feels both personal and universally resonant. Savouring Silence is a testament to the power of painting as a medium to hold, embrace and transform one’s emotions and inner landscapes.
- Roxane Hemard
Words from the Director, Lucas Kearsey
Woo Jung Ghil’s practice engages deeply with what can be termed ‘consciousness’ or ‘being’. These terms refer to the intrinsic state that underlies the human condition: a state of clarity and unity between the internal and external worlds. Defying easy description, this state is simultaneously vast and amorphous. It exists before and outside of the realm of intellect, of emotions, of symbols. Thus, it has accordingly been referred to as ‘Nothingness’ in Zen Buddhism and in Western philosophy, notably by Jean Paul Sartre, in his seminal text Being and Nothingness. It is the paradox of the fullness of Nothingness that finds its expression in Woo Jung Ghil’s oeuvre.
Woo Jung Ghil’s process is a balance between intuition, clarity and control. Pigments are diluted significantly to enable thin layers of paint to be applied to canvas. A fundamental precursor to the application of each layer of paint is the achievement of an ‘ideal’ state of mind. This allows her to apply the paint spontaneously without mental preconceptions. As the initial layers progress a concept of how the painting will proceed emerges. The application of subsequent layers is then informed in dialogue with this concept. This echoes the phenomenological processes of the mind as new surroundings are analysed and understood.
The compositions exist as a paradox: they give form to formlessness. This is the visual iteration of the concept of a full Nothingness. As tones, colours, lines and shapes converge a sense of depth is achieved. ‘All these layers matter’ Woo Jung Ghil states, ‘because they eventually come up’. This can be seen in the subtle tonal modulations and bleed of colour as layers of paint intertwine. This depth is the visual analogue of the vastness of consciousness once the ‘ideal’ state of mind is achieved.
What is striking in Woo Jung Ghil’s work is the coherence of process and final work. Although exact descriptors of this correlation are inherently tricky, the feelings evoked by each painting stands as testament to the success of her philosophical inquiry. The ‘ideal’ state of mind that is prerequisite for Woo Jung Ghil’s process permeates the canvas. This results in the powerful feeling of serenity they induce.
