Umber Blue 1991

Yun Hyong-keun made this painting, Umber Blue, with oil on canvas, and you can really see that process. It’s so straightforward, like, here’s the canvas, here’s the paint, what can we do with it? Looking at the surface, there’s this dialectic, you know, between control and accident. On the left we have this gorgeous inky black, so dense it almost feels like a void, but then it bleeds at the edges, creating this kind of hazy border. And in the centre, there's this vertical umber line, dividing the painting in two. It's not quite straight, wavering like a breath held too long, and it shows the weave of the canvas really clearly. The whole thing reminds me a little bit of Agnes Martin, but turned inside out. Like, both artists are interested in the grid, but where Martin is all about lightness and transcendence, Yun is interested in the earth, in the weight of things. And both artists remind us that the best paintings are often the ones that leave the most room for us to think, to feel, to question.