Geun-Taek Yoo 유근택 Candlelight with Smoke 연기와 촛불, 2025

Geun-Taek Yoo has primarily painted landscapes and still lifes since the beginning of his career. Compared to his earlier works, the objects depicted in Candlelight with Smoke appear, depicted in a simplistic composition, to speak a rather straightforward symbolic language. The depicted objects–a figurine, an extinguished candle, a magazine cover with the word “art” prominently placed, and a lit candle–readily invoke the context of traditional allegories. The placement of a ball of crumpled paper in front of the figurine can be read as a metaphor for the relationship between humans and creation. However, the visual link between the crumpled paper and the twisting mass of smoke from the extinguished candle unsettles our gaze. The symbols are in plain sight, but the density of the rippling lines dominating the entire screen disrupts our vision, pulling us into emotional and sensory turmoil rather than a systematic reading of the symbols. Ultimately, the work makes us experience the unstable surface of the world through disorientation, rather than through the clarity of interpretation.