by Peter Rautmann

Translated from the original by John W. Dennis

Yun-Hee Huh is a passionate artist whose work unfolds into an East-West dialog. This has been nurtured by the experiences of a Korean artist who embarked on a second course of studies in Germany / Europe, and manifested itself in the intense emotion of experiencing a new culture. Meanwhile, after completing her studies at the University of the Arts Bremen, she has again returned to Korea.

Huh Yun-Hee understands in works artistic not only how to translate with persistent urgency her experiences of separation, pain, and loneliness, but also the yearned for return of happiness and joy. She uses the symbolic language of visual metaphors, which, on one side are universal and familiar (the tree of life, seeds, fruit and flowers as symbols of growth), but on the other side combined in an unusual way to experience one’s own space: From open hands dark seeds fall not as one would suspect onto the earth,( as van Gogh depicted in the Sower), but in a moving sea; because water is life. The feeling of growth, the desire of heavy arms being freed to become wings – to be able to rise up, the feeling of a sensation a growth in ones own body, the closeness to plants, grasses, trees, flowers and all the semen which they contain – all are creations waiting to become pictures In a blissful hour all this can be achieved.

Departure and return, leaving and arriving are important emotional knots in the artistic-thematic interfaces of the artist’s works. The main metaphor is therefore the journey, and with it the ship: The small heavily laden boat which set out upon its journey, steers its way home, the rope – only partly drawn in, is still trailing in the water-is an anchor snagged? Or is it rather a tube, transporting the elixir of life – water to the waiting head with its closed fish-mouth. It remains undecided, to be resolved by the associations of the beholder which interpretation gains the upper hand. In any event, they are dream images with large, silent heads whose sightless eyes turn inwards, giving heed to itself – in the land of dreams, sleep and unconscious take up residence in this vast sea, on which float the small islands of our lost consciousnesses.

The drawings are drawn almost entirely with charcoal. This produces not only clear, black contour lines on the nothingness of the white paper, but also through the smudging of an image a record is caused which in the process of artistic work is discarded and pushed blurred into the background, in order to give room to new associations.

The individual sheets of paper can be connected into sequels, and then they become diary documents, images of different states of being and emotional states in the course of a period of time – a week – day after day: The feeling of being locked in a narrow windowed and door less house, a desperate breakout – liberated existence, soaring high and floating like a cloud, failure and again wariness between the black walls of the house.

She also enlarges her works to monumental wall-drawings, then Yun-Hee Huh draws with charcoal stick attached to a broom. In Video documentation this is a particularly fascinating process with the rhythmic scratching of the charcoal stick on the wall. There is the creation of forms caused by the connection of charcoal with the rough surface of the wall – then what doesn’t adhere, doesn’t cling, falls as a gentle blossom rain to the ground, there to remain, shapeless matter. This material waits but again for the hand, with the ability to create. Each artistic act means converting something invisible into something visible, that within turns into the outer, it transforms. The artist places her marks, captivating them on the wall, enabling symbolic life.

Huh Yun-Hee also writes poems: In simple pleasing to the ear words she describes the facts of life. The poems nearly resemble songs, full of jubilation and full of sorrow. To do them justice one should read her poems aloud to eavesdrop upon their linguistic sounds“I have a longing, / a longing / to become a plant / which turns toward the light.” In the act of reading arises the desire for life.

The conceptual material of her work is the dialogue of cultures, migration as a key experience of the 20th, and even more so in the 21st Century. Her work makes visible what is silently lived through in many immigrant fates: They are pictures of the search for a new home, where no one was. In many of her works there prevails a feeling of homelessness and also a yearning mood, which reminds us of the German Romantic Joseph von Eichendorff and his famous poem “Moon Night” whose final verse reads: “And my soul stretched / Her wings wide out, / Flew through the silent land, / As if she would fly home. “So greet connected spirits between distant space and time.

Prof. Dr. Peter Rautmann

Ex-president of University of the Arts Bremen

Representative of Institut Syn