Painting, for Hyun-Sook Song, is an analogue refuge. Transplanted from an early life in mid-century rural South Korea to the workforce in a rapidly modernising West Germany, Song turned to art-making to image fragmentary memories of a past life and, through them, a fading cultural paradigm. The forms she delineates with only a few sweeping brushstrokes carry the material and muscle memories of the cyclical agriculture that sustained life in the mountain village where she was born – harvesting rice with a sickle, uncoiling threads from silk cocoons. Song builds her canvases through a carefully choreographed sequence of movements, akin to the breath-guided flow of qigong, to channel invisible forces as she applies the egg tempera paint. Sprüth Magers presents new paintings by Song, in conversation with earlier works, at the London gallery, marking the artist’s first exhibition in the UK.
Song’s physical act of painting exceeds the wrist, engaging the entire body. She lays the canvas on the studio floor, sets wooden blocks on either side and balances a narrow plank across them–a bridge on which to move.