He travels from the high valleys of the Indus to the highlands of Rajasthan and the Decan Plateau to the southern Indian city of Peninsula. What in the world is this exile? Why are you leaving your hometown so far away from the circuit of modern art? What's strange is that he knows Korean traditional calligraphy and is also not aware of trends in American and European painting in recent decades. Nevertheless, his conversation does not repeat or compromise. And he doesn't smell of any academicism at all. He doesn't resemble anything we're used to. It is an attempt to be free from precedent and identifiable models. It's an attempt to understand and untangle something he sees and feels, to shake and hold on to him.

In one place - no matter what part of India or what part of the imagination it is - he neither tries to pull down a landscape nor tries to describe something. Nor is he satisfied with some symbolic forms and suggestive symbols. After all, he doesn't want an exact conception or a complete abstraction. For him, this distinction is certainly not important at all, and the constant debate over the abstracts and ideas of countless factions in Europe and the United States is all the more meaningless. He's looking for a pathway to what he calls "réalité" - no substitute for Dali - through his own rhythm in his own way. Every single one of his works is this quest and we can clearly read the attempt

Everything cooperates in his work. For example, he excites the color with extremely intense red or yellow that can be seen on the soil or in India, sometimes contrasting white with black. In recent works, a thick black mass of textures, such as black and charcoal, is frequently deployed in the center of the canvas and intrudes into space, darkening the screen. This allows us to move our eyes around the screen like a live moon, in order to prevent our vision from going further and to block the depth of the screen. Is this just a conversational effect? Of course not. By blackening the screen, Ko suggests the impossibility of perception, blindness, and the concealment of Samra Mansang through night. In fact, it is an indirect difficulty that conversation wants to overcome and avoid. Black is certainly a strong denial and a threat here.

Most of the series of works on the title, 'Canadian Canaan,' seems to cover these risks, their developments, and the artist's defense posture against them. The artist must somehow protect the canvas from the black shadow that falls upon it. As the splashes of paint, the hastily scribbled letters and numbers are seen everywhere, the pots and glasses that look like rare objects, the teas - all of which are black and blue - all of which are exactly unknown. Isn't this all about rescuing and protecting them from being erased and forgotten?

Is it symbolic contrast? It certainly is. It is either the survival of the painting itself or the negation - the dark-like monochrome. In the suspenseful canvas, the mood of the scene slowly heads down, and the painting runs between two contradictory futures: the bright white dazzle and the abyss of too deep a black. It looks balanced at first sight, but this balance looks momentary and unstable. Such a balance as if one side is lacking and one side will lean to the other. So the circle or the faint contours of stones and trees are against this extinction.If there is a need for a comparison to justify this logic, we can put Ko Young-il and Cy Twombly side by side. Their works share the following points, despite their wide differences in production process and appearance. Both men's works seem to have been drawn over the void. And the feeling of weak, thin and fluid is a common factor in their work.

There is a danger of being broken, but the painting still holds itself. Their paintings refuse to be swallowed and dissolved. We know that the world of fables, books and poems, countless names and works, Greece, and Roman mythology can one day disappear. Already there is nothing left from them but broken ruins, dim memories, uncertain and vague epitaphs. On too empty white paper, on top of such a neutral gray monochrome, Tombly sprinkles blood-red, writes, and scratches on incomplete figures, humble lines-and yet terribly gorgeous-in spite of that.

Assuming that Ko's work is also similar to other people's work, the author responds that his art acts are based on his clear will to approach the essence more closely, distancing himself from the modern era marked by chaos, exchanges, change and flight. He is willing to prepare for today's haste and complacency, noise and quiet, distraction and calm. His unflattering belief also links his affection for places like Radek and Janska, where Buddhism has occurred and is preserved intact. He is also concerned about Korea's unique culture, which is on the verge of serious degeneration and oblivion. So he recently began to feature the form of an ancient pottery in his paintings in a white canvas and a very faint gray shade. What does this unexpected hint mean? Is it to remind us that one memory, one civilization, is disappearing into a consistent, standardized international style?

To uncover their rather complex autobiographical elements, is it an inappropriate comparison? American-born Tom Bly has already been living a voluntary exile in Rome for more than a decade, and Korean Ko Young-il has the same exile in Delhi. This departure and isolation clearly indicate that both of them are refusing to compromise. They refused to join this era because they have such a clear grasp of what the misfortune of this era is. They felt they were strangers. In other words, they are looking at things in a very general way.

Ko's paintings are attributed to such reflections, namely, distant paving -" distance." His strict paintings are neither tempting nor willing to let us go. It does not seek to be nice, nor does it attempt to show off its odd workmanship. His paintings, which are extremely restrained and use accurate expressions, are directed toward reason through vision. Not many artists have such spiritual abilities.

Ko Young Il theMyth,182x227,acrylic on canvas,1996

painted Africa,97x162cm,acrylic on canvas,2009

scenery,89x130cm,acrylic on canvas,2020

9-3 Ko Young Il,Myth, 120X260cm, Acrylic om canvas