When the charcoal black lines spontaneously gather to form the dense black patterns in Bae Sang Sun’s early work, one can feel the flow of the lines and energy charged within that black space. However, this same black space is also capable of leaving one with the exact opposite impression, as if it was suddenly left over as a remnant of the white, as precisely planned.
Bae started developing her new aesthetic approach towards the presence of this black space within her works since her solo show in Osaka, June 2003, where she positioned it at the very bottom of the canvas. The black was handled as if it were a cloth similar to velvet, a material on which she had previously drawn delicate white lines in gesso, as well as also building up and evaporating subtle layers of white pigment.
Bae says, ‘White is black. White surrounded by black sometimes looks black.’ She does not mean optical illusion, but the existence of the boundary between black and white, and the experience which exists along those margins.
Paradoxically, black and white, which are completely isolated, do meet through the depth of velvet. Careful brush strokes in white are able to fundamentally transcend their form as simple visual patterns.
It brings to mind the work of certain Japanese novelists today attempting to capture this experience, where several individual phases are placed in parallel and are able to meet through their profound resonance.
‘Far beyond the boundary of limited surface of mountain, leaves sprouting from the brunches and the stems of the weeds are overlapping, like one upon another, and the other upon the others, and finally they are budding from the boundary of the mountain and overflowing…’ by Kazushi Hosaka,
Yasuo Miwaki,
art critic / psychiatrist
べ サンスンの旧作の一部で、木炭の黒い線が集まって黒いカラーフィールドを作る時、人は線に流れを感じ、色面にエネルギーのチャージを感じるだろう。しかしその黒の色面は、計画された通りに作られたがゆえにいきなり放置された部分のような印象も拭えなかっただろう。黒の色面が画面の最下部にまとめられた２００３年６月の大阪の個展以降、黒の色面のあり方への倫理的な配慮が始まる。べは、新作において黒をベルベットに近い布として用い、そこへ白が入ったジェストで線を丹念に描き込み、あるいはニュアンスが異なる白の面を重ねる。「白は黒であり、黒に囲まれた白は黒に見えることもある」とべは言う。彼女は錯覚の事を言っているのではない。白と黒の間に生じる境界の発生を、まさに境界が発生している現場での経験のことを言っているのだ。黒と白という隔絶したものが、ベルベットの深さと白の筆遣いの丹念さにおいて、黒白模様の単純な形成を根本から超越して、出合う。この出合いの経験のことを彼女は言っているのである。この経験は、例えば、今、日本で信頼できる数少ない小説家が書き
続けようとする、複数の位相が並列され且つ遭遇する経験である。
「山という限られた表面積しかないところの限界をはるかに越えて、木の枝や草の茎から出た葉が、葉の上に葉、葉の上に葉、と重なっていき、葉は山の表面から吹き出し、あふれ・・・・・」。
（保坂和志『重層の時間』）
三脇康生 美術批評家・精神科医）