| Painting in the Eye of the Storm-Geun-Ho Yoo | |
Painting in the Eye of the Storm Geun-Ho Yoo (Art Critic) Something is shaking and stirring, something is hurling down in an accelerated rate, and yet something else is moving up and down, and wiggling. A blend of colors is on the canvas. This kind of first impression cannot be hidden. When the time of turbulence is over, silence ensues in the painting, it is sparsely drawn but the true nature of the subject matter can be seen in the retina. There clearly exists luxurious flowers; there is a horse galloping rhythmically without any restraints as well although unrefined and reinterpreted with splashing colors. If the sequence of events is taken into account, what he has drawn—rather, the forms recreated—seems like a moment captured and has a strong air that it is an arbitrary depiction; at the same time, paradoxically, there are delicate expressions that seem to owe a great deal of debt to the true natures of the objects being portrayed. I feel that the painter has attempted the spiritual renewal of the physical entities that are products of close examinations of the relationship between him and the subject matter. We diagnose Seok-Young Kim’s drawings as the mirror image in painting, or as an attempt by the painter to empathize with his subject matters, etc. The fact that his drawings can be clearly identified is why they can be considered as mirror images, and it is appropriate to see them as empathetic portrayals as well in that the painter passionately projects his sentiments in his paintings. At the end of the day, these diagnoses suggest that Seok-Young Kim’s paintings are bold, but it also means that he is speaking the language of harmony on the canvas to portray the objects of everyday day life as seen by all. However, Seok-Young Kim’s canvas, which at once, looks like body gestures to express the worldly existence as he pours, sprays and marks, but it also looks like a site where sounds of heavy breathing and heartbeats could be heard. These words are often used when describing the abstract expressionism, but they can also can be considered to be a symbolic phraseology that reveals a result of an attempt to focus on the medium of the performance that tries to draw the life force, the dynamic force, or the system of signs that is used to show these forms are visible. From such perspective, one who is viewing his painting detects traces a performance that is just as impressive as any painting of abstract expressionism; that is, it is a performance to be sure, but one that discovers layers of expressive recreations. It follows that it can be confirmed that there is no deliberate attempt to deny or ignore his methodology of recreation from these layers. What was an issue for him, rather, was to approach what is within the object while focusing on the performance of the medium at the same time. Furthermore, it means that he is not just trying to show the subject matter as beautifully as possible, but more energy is expended to extract the true nature of the subject matter. As such, it is to explore the true nature of the subject matter from the perspective of what the performance ‘means’ rather than the perspective focus purely on forms. The brush strokes that could be considered as the process of making the subject matter visible have, to him, settled as a structural frame that are used to track the origins of everyday objects (archi-peindre) as it is through them, which are performances that make more active visualization—that in a sense is secondary—possible. Seok-Young Kim’s paintings are overpowering with luxurious and scattered colors even before the forms are imprinted on the retina which, in a sense, is an unexpected amalgam of pigments. It is a violent mixture of colors. In the mixture, however, there are no unnecessary recreations, or layers of paints for matiere that is excessive. If any layers of surplus paints can be seen, they are merely visual phenomena—and not really excessive. Also, the fact that we can see what we know, actually more than what we expect to see, in those chunks of amalgam, means he is not just another expressionist painter who draws realistic objects extemporaneously. Actually, the motifs that Seok-Young Kim work on to express his creativity are nothing special. ‘Flowers’ and ‘horses’ are nothing new as themes. Rather, they are close to being traditional themes. It even seems vain if one believes that he can draw these motifs better than others. Be that as it may, to be inspired by his paining unexpectedly means that there is an immense storm raging on the canvas. It is a storm to be sure but one that is graceful and thus has to be embraced. Its graceful nature can only be felt if there are sentiments that could not be reached with intense brush strokes like the storm at the end of the hand that make them. This graceful storm, to be specific, is due to his desire to draw the subject matters in detail without losing any characteristics while brandishing the brush intensely. It is not often that we discover this kind of sensitivity in paintings that are so intense and expressive. It is because intensity and sensitivity, by definition, are placed in opposite directions. When these quick brush strokes that are fierce and coarse—the amalgam of colors—reach the world beyond reality and physicality (i.e., become an object of art), it means that the clash of different forms and the discordance among them converged successfully; Seok-Young Kim’s paintings reveal this fact eloquently. If one wants to understand Seok-Young Kim’s paintings accurately, he has to examine how the painter has successfully combined two perspectives situated in opposite ends. Actually, there is a simple explanation for the successful convergence. The value of the convergence changes depending on where the emphasis between the main actor—the painter—and the subject matter is laid. In the previous private exhibition, Seok-Young Kim was more true to his sentiments than his subject matters, and the virtues of convergence could not be detected. The subject matters were just lures that show only the traces of sensibility, which were by-products of the painter’s performance. That is, it may not have been faithful reproductions from a general point of view, but the painter’s intentions were too easy to discern. However, we would like see the other side of things, as it were. But even children know that what is visible is not everything, that it is not easy to view what lies beyond, either. Perhaps people have a distorted view that the object of art that allows a transition from the world of physicality to the world of spirituality—that is, the other side of the physical world—as such ‘other’ side. Was that a distortion? We often forget the cardinal rule in the world of painting, “The painter remains silent and let only the images speak.” In other words, in the opposite case, when the ‘language’ of the painter stands out much more than the images’, the history of art calls this group of paintings as expressionist in general. There is no reason why a painting should be deficient in value or quality as an object of visual art because it is an expressionist one. Rather, it is a great art form that has enjoyed prominence for a generation. The issue is, really, whether the painter’s unique spirituality is enmeshed with the visual presentation. This is the realm that Seok-Young Kim has reached in this exhibition. If the problem is the lack of imagination, let’s remind ourselves that what can be imagined is also our alternative reality, as Picasso had said. This world of imagination is a problem worth considering, but there is a special reason why I am mentioning ‘the other side of the object of art’; it is because I would like to draw to attention Seok-Young Kim’s outstanding methodology that shines in his paintings being exhibited here. It is apparent that luxurious festival of colors was in display even in recent paintings. The fact that the presence of the subject matters come alive now proves that certain communions between Seok-Young Kim and the subject matters, and between spirituality and physicality exist. If I might add, even when the subject matters’ physical forms are not faithfully recreated, the life forces that exude from the subject matters are well expressed. For example, when horses are painted blue, red or yellow or even as a combination of colors, the painter’s pulses and breaths are felt in the horses depicted in the paintings at the same time. Rather, perhaps, the horses’ pulses and breaths have been transferred to the painter. So, the colors move up and down wanting to escape from the four corners of the canvass. In this respect, it seems Seok-Young Kim would like to see his subject matters escape the canvas rather than keeping them confined inside it. Even if that is not the case, he definitely wants to makes the canvas a dynamic space that comes alive. What that means is that the painting’s true character is revealed in the reciprocal exchanges between the painter and the subject matter, and between the spirituality and the physicality. Another virtue that needs to be mentioned is that Seok-Young Kim manages to overcome the limitations of forms that are trapped within the four corners of the frame and suffer the impotence of immobility; further, he engages in the existential introspection of the modern art scene, which is facing the sense of crisis as it confronts plain subject matters in the art of reproduction. At the end, his unique language of visual art blooms to maximize the pleasure of visual forms that the painting of re-creation possesses. |
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ARTIST Criticism
