NEW YORK, NY.- A consonant is defined by an impediment – a partial or complete obstruction of the airflow in the vocal tract. It is the antithesis of the directness expressed by a vowel – a sound produced with an open vocal tract, allowing air to flow freely. Ironically, the free flow of air alone does not produce a full spectrum of desired meanings. It is its inhibition that completes human spoken language.

Arguably, all paintings are translations; imagery is predetermined in the painter’s mind before it is realized on canvas. True to both traditions of representation and abstraction, this process of cartography is never one hundred percent accurate. The artist’s style is revealed by the methods of translation between the “imagery in mind” and the “imagery realized.” Some are “vowel” painters who keep their mouths open and resist the blockage of the flow. Contrarily, “consonant” painters only partially disclose their original plans and recruit materials lost in translation to complete their final arguments. Using actual Hangul (Korean) consonants as her motif, Jenny Jisun Kim’s Verses on Oxherding paintings weave together a fable of translation and painting under the guise of linguistic gibberish.

A seasoned translator between Korean and English literature and poetry, the artist is well aware of the inconclusiveness of most translation works in a linguistic setting. In this new series of works, Kim continues to explore these limitations via yet another translation-painting. Her choice of Hangul consonants, which are modeled after the shapes our mouths make, is thoughtful and unapologetic; their silence is to be pronounced by the brushstrokes and heard by the eyes. She pairs these angulated semiotics with Oxherding pictures under the Zen Buddhist tradition.

The original Buddhist Oxherding pictures are a sequence of ten illustrations accompanied by poems and commentaries that depict the path to enlightenment through the metaphor of taming an ox. Each stage, from the protagonist searching for the ox to his returning to the world with open hands, visualizes a distinct phase of spiritual development. Kim’s Verses on Oxherding reimagines this sequence across fourteen paintings, with one retained constant: a circle that overlays each painting and its background. Ironically, the only Hangul consonant that isn’t angular, “ㅇ,” resembles a perfect circle, which is also the ultimate symbol in Zen Buddhism.

Just like her paintings, when Kim speaks English, she carries the slightest accent. For those who know the language, they might identify it as Korean, but approaching her from her art, it is an accent that demonstrates a humbleness in admitting the limitation of languages and their signs, a trigger of subjective imperfection and an invitation to open our mouths and join the conversation even if what is spoken is a gibberish consisting of only consonants.

Wittgenstein once hushed us with the shortest chapter of writing in the history of philosophy, which reads “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” After this line, blank pages were intentionally left. Kim’s Verses on Oxherding series wittily responds to the language philosopher by filling in these blank pages. Speaking with painting might reach the same conclusion, the only difference lies in the fact that she had actually spoken.

-Phil Zheng Cai