"Shape" (2001-2004), "Landscape over Being" (2005-2008), and Untitled (2010-2011) series. These are paintings which Yoo, Ju-Hee has made until now. Of course, years of those periods are not so accurate. It is due to some cases of which specific patterns of those series have overlapped. And such overlapping is still possible as we find it in her recent works. Among those series, I am going to speculate on Yoo's painting through the series of Landscape over Being. It is not only because the title is suggestive, but the form of these series provides a clue to her other works.

Analyzing the title "Landscape over Being", we would notice that it approximately means the other side of existence or the landscape beyond existence. At this point, the concept of landscape divides into a place to where our being belongs and a place where it doesn't. In reality, this division between landscape and being could be found in the horizons of land and sea. When faced with, we become at a loss. It is because that we see a border between the place we belong and the other world, and that we see a vision which the unknown world provides. Art will flourishes over that vision and on that border. Pascal saw the God, Kant saw the sublimity of nature. Or someone may experience an absolute loneliness or a perfect frustration. What all is the God, loneliness and frustration in this regard? In fact these are taken up from the inner self which stands against that vision. This is a result of action by which the real landscape brings out the inner landscape through a magic process. At last, both landscapes call each other, become a whole one and change into the one that can not be distinguished. Thus I permeate into a landscape being as a part of it. Finally, I can step into the other and the unknown world.

If so, how are the paintings done in this series? The artist divides painting surface into two parts, dividing it on low level as we usually see in a landscape painting. And then she paints the low section with mono-chromatic and wholly flat color which gives a neutral, impassive and languid impression. On the upper surface which is wider than the bottom, she pushes randomly poured white and black pigments to the edges with a squeeze. By this action, the two colors become mixed leaving undefined, variable and accidental vestiges. So far to this moment, formalism appears more apparently than representationalism. So to speak, there is a contrast between determined surface and accidental one, or between fixed surface and fluid one.

Although her paintings are made according to the formal aesthetic, they astonishingly accompany certain representational aspects. In this situation, I feel deluded myself as if I watch a dynamic surface from a static position. It is alike that I see undefined and changeable shapes of cloud, or that I see a black-and-white photograph which is trumped-up and distorted, and which pretends to be appear accidentally. For example, it looks like an image of face that is flattened and spreaded sidewards. Basically, this shape is accidentally made, so people may read it differently. Moreover, we may feel giddy watching the other side of existence.

And although I said that the bottom part of painting looks unrevealing, the artist adds an emotional aspect by adopting various monotones. She has a tendency to use neutral colors than primary ones. Whether a deep ultramarine evokes a sensation of dark night, and thus it makes us fall into an abyss of loneliness, the subtlety of neutral pastel tone adds ladyishness to her painting. Responding to an illusion which we feel on the upper part, these colors transform formal paintings into representational paintings, and change the mood of blank paintings into picturesque ones.

Nonetheless, painting itself is a result of not representationalism but of formalism. Let's go back to the title “Landscape over Being”. In spite of depictive characteristics implicit in the title, the meaning of it might be understood with formal logic. For instance, the “Being” belongs to emotional, practical, realistic and representational horizon. And the other side of Being is a place which is different from representational reality, a place where the autonomy of painting and inner rhythm effect as a norm, a place where the essence of painting reveals itself as a landscape, and finally, a place where the paradigm of modernism which is motivated by formal logic exists as a vision. The artist looks at and tries to reach that vision. But, again, as we discussed above, it is unavoidable that this vision arouses a representational characteristics. Explaining this way, it seems that the formal and representational logics are rivaling, and that they are equations and dialectics of art of painting. And that equations and dialectics seem to be a preview of possible changes of the artist's paintings, the artists who is relatively strict to the formal logic.

Let us deal with other series paintings. In “Untitled” series, the artist tries to make paintings adopting a paradigm of modernism and a logic of formalism more of less rigidly. At first sight, these paintings show repetitions and patterns. She pours white and black, white and ochre, white and blue on canvases, and then she scrapes the surface with a squeeze as if she draws or makes strokes with brushes, but this time the strokes are short. Through this process of repetition ground color and paints become intermingled, and again, the shapes are atypical, variable and accidental. I might say that the brushwork which we generally see in paintings is replaced with the short and cut scrapes of squeeze. A difference lies in a fact that the overlapped touches in plain paintings look chaotic seen at close range, but in some distance(psychological or aesthetic) they reveal certain representational shapes. But in this artist's case, there are no recognizable shapes in her painting, regardless near or far, but we only can see undiscerning vestiges of squeeze work.

Truly in this time, she seems to make her mind not to imply any representational shapes, even by accident at least. Moreover, if a squeeze runs one way there remains a sensation of speed or direction, but she does not permit it by leaving vestiges of squeezing evenly. So, the artist gives us an impression that she intends to control to maintain the flatness of painting by spreading traces of squeezing movement all over the canvas.

As we know, the flatness of canvas is the most essential keyword of modernist paradigm. She tries to comply the formalism logic of modernist painting(to be specific, Clement Greenberg's logic) which tends not to depict and not to reveal the least action, but to return every momentum of painting to the norm of flatness. Complying? Because there is not a correct answer in the art of painting, the term “complying” seems a little weird. If not complying, it should be fulfillment. Moreover, there is no room for such individuality in her painting, so her works do not belong to a kind of painting which pursues individuality. Isn't it the formalism logic of modernism which is neutral in value judgement, expressionless, dry and, most of all, thoroughly meaningless dimension which was induced by colorlessness, scentlessness and sterility? (What really does the paradigm of modernism pursue? Analytic philosophy of painting? Ascetic pleasures? Spiritual exaltation?)

Then, why the artist sets herself on the zero point of this kind of painting? She said it is a “fulfillment”. To be precise, it is a repeating fulfillment, and in the course of this fulfillment a selfness might be erased and an action becomes transparent. Can she find a moment when the other dimension will open in the dimension on which just pure actions take place? The artist's paintings have spectators stand right upon the moment when the art of painting begins. And her paintings have them ask themselves about the meaning(to which they will get different answers) and essence of painting(Is there any essence or objectivity of painting anyway?).