Kim got the idea of his works from flowing river. River ran through his home. Regardless of whether it really ran, a river runthrough every home. Every countryside home is more homelike when a river runs through it, and one always thinks about theriver that ran through one’s home on reminiscing about it. A river is running both on the ground where the artist stands and inhis mind. All rivers converge into one. The river that ran through home flows and finally overflows in the artist’s mind. That a riveris always connected to the image of home in this artist’s consciousness finally leads to our recognition that all rivers signify hislonging for his old home. Therefore, drawing a river means expressing his longing for his original being with this artist.Notes :A Vast, Endless River Running through Our Reminiscent Mind by Kho Chung Hwan, Art Critic

The World of Dae-Kwan Kim's Works of Art

A Vast, Endless River Running through Our Reminiscent Mind

Kho, Chung-Hwan

A running river tends to make us absent-minded when we look at it. At first, we feel the similarity between waves on the river and ourselves. And then, suddenly we are lost and only waves remain. The river and our consciousness are separate at first, but gradually the river comes to the side of our consciousness making it full and overflow. The river can come over into the realm of our consciousness, while our consciousness cannot make the river overflow. Our consciousness can only reduce the river into a prosaic concept. At any rate, even when our consciousness are overflown for the influence of coming river, sometimes this river seems to move but other times not. However, at any rate, the river flows. Time seems to flow or stop as well. Our consciousness could not notice, but it flows anyhow. For the share of flowing nature, river can be an analogy to time.

Herakleitos said "No man ever steps in the same river twice". Everything changes. All the things constantly changes in the world. To change means to flow. Likewise, river flows, time and existence does as well. We can't catch flowing existence. Therefore, we have a feeling of endless vastness if we look at a flowing river.

Dea-Kwan Kim used to take a walk along the river in the neighborhood when he went to a university for his major in Halle, Germany. Meanwhile, he soothed and cherished his nostalgia toward his home. A river flows through his country home. His home village river overflew, and a river in a foreign land in his mind at the same time, thus, another new river happened to exist and start flowing in his consciousness. Therefore, the river means to this artist the nostalgia, a kind of sentiment that he had whenever he missed his hometown, and comes down to him as a returning journey to his childhood. This artist came to keep the desire to shape his nostalgia and time based on the flowing river, and began to express his desire in his works of art. The river running through this artist's mind is the same one that flows deep in our mind in various forms with different depth and width. Everyone might have his own river running through his mind. Our own rivers can be one of time, of remorse, or of oblivion. This artist's theme and works based on the river acquire our sympathy and universality overflowing onto our mind.

It is true that shaping the river running through our mind is never an easy and simple job. First of all, our mind as well as the river has no tangible forms. We could recognize the color and shape of the river at a first glimpse, but it can't be reduced to one definite color because it covers a very wide spectrum of various changing colors. The shape and tone of everything in the world has amorphous characteristics. The attempt to represent objets can be a failure if the shape and tone of it is connected not only to natural phenomena (for example, the intensity of light and atmospheric condition) but also to our consciousness. Shapes and tones that are perceived through the prism of human mind are questions that should be dealt beyond the matter of choice on expressing substance, and should be dealt in the realm of our sense and implications. Evidently, it is almost impossible to cover the river of sensuous and suggestive characteristics.

Here, Dae-Kwan Kim found out glass painting. He believed he could express the river running through his mind if he put some colors on a pane of transparent glass as water let the light penetrate itself. It is light that makes water look transparent, and that penetrates substances of water. Glass has similar quality to water even though different substances constitute these two things each other. Light works as a medium in making water and glass have a lot in common. Without light, these two things only exist as different objects. After all, t show water is equal to to express light. In other words, the artist aims to awake our senses to perceive water(substances of water) and recognize light(texture of light) at the same time through his glass paintings.

Especially tone of color has a close relationship with natural phenomena, not to speak of the form of a river. A river looks blue in a clear day, but it turns into jade-green even in a clearer day. When a forest stands beside it, river reflects light green color to the world, sometimes turning it to green or dark green. When the glow of setting sun falls on the surface of the river, the river put forth the color of light through the color of water. It can be said to cover a wide range of color spectrum between orange and red. Then, the blue changes itself to dark blue when it gets dark, and vanished into the dark. Whatever color a color is, it conceals high transparency in its hidden side. Furthermore, it can't be reduced or defined with a simple name of a single color. A color can embrace a few colors at a time, so it shows itself as not simply a color but rather an air or aura of it. In this way, the type of tone shown in the works of this artist could be explained on where and how it came from. Essentially the core of this artist's world of art is to represent the tone, feeling (these are connected to the artist's feeling toward water) about the color he has faced on water.

To understand this, we need to take a close look at the process of how he creates his works of art. Roughly the process could be explained in this way. First, he painted glass pigment on a pane of glass. He attached a very narrow thin line tape onto some part of the pane to remain it not to be painted. (The tpae is to be removed afterward.) The artist burns these panes in a kiln at the temperature of 620 degrees C. The heat is to be increased slowly. Through the repetition of painting and burning the pane of glass over and over again, the artist comes up with the pane of glass that contains the subtle and transparent texture of the color on its surface. Two glass-panes painted with similar colors were overlapped with small space between them in that these two panes show one image. For instance, the glass-pane painted light blue, and this make the empty lines noticeable. At the end, the artist finishes his works by putting some dots of complementary colors on the empty lines.

Here the surface of pane tinted with pigments implies the surface of water, and those narrow thin lines makes us feel the course and the speed of water for the visual effect of crossing the glass-pane. These lines seem to show fragments of light broken onto the surface of water and the dots on the lines stress it. In this way, the artist emphasized his feeling toward dispersing light upon the surface of flowing water.

Despite the effort to schematize this artist's process of creation, his work can not be explained simply in a very mechanic scheme. That is to say, the front of the two overlapped similar colored glass-panes with small space between them can't be explained with a name of single color, and is giving us a sense of transparency and limitless depth. Moreover, overlapped similar colors cause narrow empty lines to show their own variations, overlapping and not matching up themselves. A series of these artistic effects organically generate transparent and deep textures of water, and express the fragmentation of the light shattered on the surface. That texture and the feeling of fragmentation are emotionally static enough to motivate us for contemplation and meditation.

Generally the horizontal lines are emphasized in most of this artist's glass paintings. We can find some works that show vertical lines, but usually he tends to bring long horizontal lines into a relief. It is needless to say that Dea-Kwan Kim follow the natural quality of river flowing sideways. (This has nothing to do with natural principle that water flow from high to low.) Scenery described in the unlimitedly expanded horizontal structure more easily places us a part of it than one expressed in the vertical structure. (On the other hand, the scenery of vertical structure tends to arouse the feeling of the sublime.)

Kim Dae-Kwan got the idea of his works from flowing river. River ran through his home. Regardless of whether it really ran, a river run through every home. Every countryside home is more homelike when a river runs through it, and one always thinks about the river that ran through one's home on reminiscing about it. A river is running both on the ground where the artist stands and in his mind. All rivers converge into one. The river that ran through home flows and finally overflows in the artist's mind. That a river is always connected to the image of home in this artist's consciousness finally leads to our recognition that all rivers signify his longing for his old home. Therefore, drawing a river means expressing his longing for his original being with this artist.

The artist represents water which he projected his longing for his origin (=his missing his home in his childhood days in his works of art) through unprecedented glass painting. These paintings sink us into feeling that we are alone in an endless and boundless space. To stand in front of a river means to be caught into missing something. This artist's works of art make us stand in front of our missed river.