Each of Suyoung Heo’s paintings is made by piling observations, imaginations, contemplations, strokes of paint, and drawings upon each other over extensive durations. Heo aspires to examine and paint his object directly with consecutive brushstrokes and without any preliminary drawings, and in the process, he also attempts to free himself from representationalism. He winds time and compresses and condenses it until all movements are gone, which results in a painting, a still image. Yet, when the viewer inspects the painting, the temporality contained uncoils outwards. The image created at the beginning of the relaxation cycle absorbs Heo’s soul. Here, temporality manifests in the form of tactile images, and in the process, we are allowed a brief peek into the sheer depth of Heo’s experience.

Temporality entices us because it can traverse, disperse, and crunch the universe and worlds. Heo’s images of multiple horizons cut through countless times and viewpoints, and he travels toward a realm that could only be seen through painting or by eyesight. By painting endless instances of representational images, Heo, one step at a time, makes progress into the exterior of representationalism.

Excerpt from “The Dancing Light and a World of Ecstasy” |  No Am Kim (Art critic)

Suyoung Heo layers his unreal experiences — the coming and disappearing of nature and his microcosmic and macrocosmic experience of it — in an unbroken continuity onto a single surface, and the resulting painting traverses between realism vs. abstract, representation vs. non-representation, image vs. materiality, reality vs. surreal, painting vs. erasure, and memory vs. oblivion. Thus, Heo’s landscapes, instead of depicting nature, reveal bewildering, unfamiliar nature and creations never seen before. The unearthly nature presented by him is not the nature men have established through symbolism, but nature as “the primal force and the causal origin of everything,” in other words, as chaos… Heo’s ultimate value is in “painting as creation instead of reproduction,” which does not describe anything or be put in words. Such a painting might be the “sincerity in painting” he discusses and gradually closes in on the true nature of painting. 

Excerpt from “Suyoung Heo – Painting as Creation Instead of Reproduction” |  

Young Taek Park (Professor and art critic, Kyounggi University)