Youjin Yi

Does the image also have potential for a situational work? After spatial works have been created that, with the help of specific environments, irritate a customary adaptation in order to assert the idea of art as a situation, the question arises whether also in painting and drawing images can be created, that do not open like a window to the back, but in contrast take effect straight to the front by putting the viewer in concrete experiencial situations. The imagery of the Korean artist Youjin Yi, who studied with Günter Förg and Leiko Ikemura in Berlin and Munich, are suitable for exploring such a combination of painterly and drawing strategies of Eastern and Western image conceptions. Because Yi's openly structured images sometimes condense, like flashes of memory, to a recall, to sudden views of moments of danger, but also of sensual events. After Förg's formally deconstructing rescue operation of the painterly material, emotions can now be generated in an inventive way differently again. The bilingual monograph on the artist's work with an introduction by Melitta Kliege and a conversation with Sool Park and Youjin Yi brings together over 150 of her images from the recent years.