A digital archive of Asian/Asian American contemporary art history

Invitation to Rest

1998
installation

Exhibited at TOTAL Museum, Korea, in 1999.

"Since the mid-1990s, Younhee Paik has devoted much of her attention to a series of ceiling installations that constitutes her most conceptually ambitious work.

These wall-sized unframed canvases function like tapestries, drapery, even awnings. Each canvas is a symbolic space—the artist’s view of the cosmos: starry night or white clouds unfolding. The Asian influence is present again in Paik’s ceiling installations as her method of creating them with the canvas laying flat on the floor is a typical Asian technique. Paik pours water onto the canvas, flooding it, ‘letting the water take it’s course.’ This same technique applies to her oil paintings as she relies on the element of chance—letting the turpentine spread and smear.

The soft, curving lines of the hanging canvases against the walls appear like ships’ sails approaching the viewer or as if one were watching a large kite floating above. It is a spatial opening likened to a window upon the universe. The installation, taken as a whole, invites the viewer to contemplate and dream."--artist's website.

Materials

canvas; mixed media
Invitation to Rest
Source: Slide