A Single Word Painting

Interview with Gowoon Lee and Reilly K. Davidson

In the dimly lit window of Jacobs’ Booth in Antwerp, a solitary painting burns quietly like a votive. A single canvas offered to the street, radiating both presence and absence. With deliberate limitations and ritual urgency, artist Lee Goowon distills the ambiguity of language and memory into an image hovering between abstraction and figuration. Curated by Reilly Davidson, the exhibition Sfumato transforms the void into a stage, where a single image, like a lone word, rather than imposing a definitive sentence, invites silence, tension, and infinite interpretation.

This is the first time Jacobs’ Booth presents a single painting. This eternal and inextinguishable flame radiates both presence and absence. How did you—artistically and curatorially—navigate the challenge of curating a void charged with multiple luminescent inputs?

Reilly: I’d say the timing was really perfect. When I initially reached out to Gowoon, she’d just completed some works for a group exhibition at Braunsfelder and was apt to continue this series of candle paintings, which we talked about at length in the leadup to this show. She is hyper aware of the historical implications of this work as well as its present situation. This light never goes out… and I love the way it glows 24/7.

Gowoon: Presenting a single painting was both a limitation and an opportunity. Artistically, I approached the work with the intent that it could carry multiple layers, both visually and conceptually so that it could evoke presence and absence simultaneously. I leaned into ambiguity, subtle detail, and the power of omission to create a sense of tension and depth, much like how meaning in language can exist between the lines. I’ve always been drawn to the idea of presenting a single image. Early in my studies in Germany, I was often criticized by professors for this tendency. They would say that my paintings felt more like isolated words, when, in their view, a good painting should function more like a complete sentence. But that comment stuck with me—not as a deterrent, but as encouragement. I realized I actually preferred the openness of a single word over the finality of a sentence. A single image, like a word, invites interpretation, ambiguity, and space for the viewer to project their own associations. That openness became central to both my practice and my curatorial approach. A single image on a single canvas, alone in a beautifully intimate space, felt just right.

The exhibition seems to arise from a deep collaboration between the space, the curator, and the artist. How did this shared vision take shape, and what kinds of dialogue guided the process from inception to installation?

Reilly: I’ve been a fan of Gowoon’s work for a while now, and we were able to spend a lot of time together when I visited Germany last fall. So, alongside a really wonderful friendship, I’ve had a strong desire to work together on something. When the opportunity for this exhibition at Jacobs’ Booth came about, Gowoon was the first artist who came to mind. I had this feeling she would be able to carry the space with just one work. Her paintings always feel in and of themselves while participating in this larger world that she’s building. Suffice to say, this really feels like the beginning of a long term collaboration, which is a major priority for me.

Gowoon: Before I even met Reilly, I had already read her writings and really admired them. As she mentioned, our relationship naturally evolved into a close friendship and I was delighted when she invited me to be part of this project.We started sharing ideas over WhatsApp and a few calls, and the concept for the show came together effortlessly. There was a real ease in how we communicated, built on mutual trust and respect, which I felt from the start. I hadn’t visited the space in person yet, but I happen to know Antwerp well. It’s a city I have a real affection for. When I found out the exhibition would be a window display, a memory came back to me- one evening, many years ago, when I got lost wandering through Antwerp and ended up walking through the Orthodox Jewish neighborhood. I remember seeing so many candles glowing softly in the windows. I was fascinated by this image and I wondered what it was about. Later, I learned that it’s part of Jewish tradition—candles are lit for Shabbat or Hanukkah and placed in the window as a way of marking sacred time, of bringing light into the public sphere. I found that idea so beautiful—this quiet act of visibility, of faith made gently present to the outside world. That specific memory felt strangely in sync with the idea of a window exhibition in Antwerp, how a single image offered to the street can hold space, suggest presence, and invite reflection. It became a conceptual anchor for how I approached the work in the beginning.

“I leaned into ambiguity, subtle detail, and the power of omission to create a sense of tension and depth, much like how meaning in language can exist between the lines.” – G

“When art is in conversation with its context, a new charge is able to take place.” – R.

Cropping plays a crucial role in this work. How does isolating a fragment of an image allow it to transcend the implicit nuances of Korean language, making the piece resonate on a more universal level?

Gowoon: Zooming in and cropping parts of an image initially emerged as a way for me to incorporate my understanding of the Korean language into my work. Korean, known for its indirectness, draws much of its strength from what is left unsaid—the language’s structure often allows for the omission of information, even the subject of a sentence. I wanted to mirror this implicitness in my visual practice. At the same time, I was working with widely recognized images, and cropping became a method to strip them of their familiarity. By isolating fragments, I reduced them to near abstraction, allowing them to stand more independently, detached from their original context.

Lee’s compositional choices recall Barthes’ idea of the punctum from Camera Lucida, but the references also carry a visceral charge—often violent, sometimes sexual—especially drawing from the cartoon imagery of Lee’s childhood. Is there a specific image or memory that first ignited this work?

Gowoon: Rather than one definitive image, it was a series of fragmented impressions from early childhood that shaped the foundation of this work. Specifically the strange intensity of certain cartoon characters and how their bodies or expressions carried more than what they seemed to on the surface.
For instance, I vividly remember Popeye’s impossibly swollen forearms—on the verge of bursting—and the strange sensuality in Olive Oyl’s coy, exaggerated gestures. There was something almost grotesque in their forms, yet also weirdly seductive. As a child, I didn’t have the language for what I was feeling, but those images left a deep imprint. They created a friction between the innocent and the disturbing, the playful and the perverse. In hindsight, those moments acted much like Barthes’ punctum—they disrupted the image, pierced through its flatness, and left a residue of emotion or confusion that stayed with me. That kind of rupture, where something unintended or subconscious leaks through, has become central to how I think about image-making.
I’m not interested in direct reference or nostalgia, but in working with that lingering emotional charge—the visceral tension that certain visual fragments carry, even when they come from something as seemingly benign as a childhood cartoon

The candle, reduced to the fulcrum of its consumption, is confined within a deliberately restricted frame. Were there specific limitations Lee imposed during the painting process? From a curatorial perspective, how does this spatial constraint mirror the work itself?

Reilly: It’s definitely a cliche, but there’s always the potential for constraints to breed invention. By paring down the exhibition mode to a very specific set of terms, one can lock in at every turn. For Sfumato, we discussed the particularities of the small space, the unending visibility of the work, its location in Antwerp, and how this all brushes up against Gowoon’s practice. It really feels like a stage, and we completely doubled down on this.

Gowoon: Yes, I imposed several constraints from the outset, which became central to how the work took shape. The candle is already a self-consuming object, so I wanted to echo that fragility through formal limits—a tightly cropped frame, a restrained palette, and a small scale. Everything was pared down to the edge of disappearance. My goal as a painter is to hold the image in suspension, like a held breath. Within that narrow range, I focus on subtle tensions—light, texture, presence versus erasure. The restrictions didn’t feel limiting; they acted more like a kind of fence, something to push against. I think that ultimately helped intensify the imageand it aligned well with the space, since the painting was created specifically for this project

Lee often “pokes holes in the plot,” and some works are completed in a single session. What kinds of ritual or instinct inform the act of painting? And how are these processes translated into the viewer’s experience through the exhibition’s spatial choices?

Gowoon: I work wet-on-wet partly because it forces me to commit. Everything has to happen in one cue. There’s no going back, no layering over. It’s the most direct and honest way I’ve found to get the image out of my head and onto the canvas without filtering or overthinking. That immediacy matters to me because it keeps the painting instinctual. I finished Candle Lit in one sitting. There’s a kind of ritual in that urgency that I’m drawn to. I show up, see the image clearly in my mind, and try to meet it with the brush in real time.

The painting employs sfumato to soften contours, producing a haze reminiscent of airbrushed animation. What draws you to this kind of evanescence? What is the power of working with undefined lines?

Gowoon: What draws me to this kind of evanescence is its ability to hold ambiguity, something I’ve long been fascinated by, especially through the lens of Korean euphemistic language. In Korean, meaning often floats between what is spoken and what is left unsaid. There is a quiet elegance in that indirectness. It isn’t about avoiding the truth, but about allowing space for multiple interpretations and emotional nuance.
The use of sfumato and soft, undefined lines reflects that sensibility. It allows an image to breathe and to suggest rather than state. That softness reminds me of the old tube TV I grew up with, where nothing ever appeared completely sharp. The edges always seemed to glow, with a gentle blur that created its own atmosphere. That visual texture wasn’t a limitation. It was a kind of invitation to imagine more.
Working with these hazy contours lets me capture the same tension between clarity and suggestion. It gives form to what is sensed rather than fully seen, and to the beauty of things that resist easy definition.

Given the painting’s close focus and delicate treatment of form, do you see any conversation between the stillness of Dutch master techniques?

Reilly: For sure, and this is something we spoke about while planning the exhibition. When art is in conversation with its context, a new charge is able to take place. To be showing a work like this in the midst of the local collections and history of place, a real site-specificity takes shape. Gowoon is 100% aware of what she inherits by way of painting’s past, but she isn’t limited by it. She renews its potential over and over again.

A Single Word Painting / Lee Goowon at Jacobs’ Booth

Credits:

Exhibition venue: Jacobs’ Booth / @jacobs_booth
Artist: Gowoon Lee / @gowoonly
Curator: Reilly K. Davidson / @reillykdavidson
Words: Giulia Piceni / @giuliaapiceni
Editor: Maria Abramenko / @mariabramenko
Junior Editor: Annalisa Fabbrucci / @annalisa_fabbrucci 

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