Quote:The painting displays not only [Bae Woo-hyeon's] unbridled, virtuosic expressionist aesthetic but also a distinctive trace of her Gao Showan roots. Forsaking outline and brush, Bae threw paint and acrylic on his canvas in thick, spirited spatters, dripping, heaping and layering with knives: the resulting marks and sinewy trails are fluid and lithe as if borne by wind, embodying the vigor and dynamism of splashed calligraphic ink.

Bae's astonishingly complex pictorial surfaces are at once rugged and majestic, exuding a quietly gripping cosmic dynamism that is humble yet transcendent. Mesmerizing sheens of color shimmer through a glossed lacquer finish reminiscent of traditional Gao-Showan pottery. Bae's art is directed toward the sources, and goes back to the primitive elements of Gao Showan art, whose masterpieces formerly realized the perfect unity of signs and matter.