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| Kim Tschang-yeul's "Recurrence" (1987) / Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Hyundai |
By Kwon Mee-yoo
Kim Tschang-yeul is well-known for his water drop paintings, which he has produced for over 48 years.
"The Path," a new exhibition at Gallery Hyundai, sheds light on the 91-year-old artist's pursuit of purity and serenity within droplets with an accent on text appearing in his works.
Born in Maengsan in modern-day North Korea's South Pyongan Province in 1929, Kim moved to the South at the age of 16. He entered the art school of Seoul National University via a qualification exam in 1948, but could not continue his studies after he was ostracized for learning from Lee Que-de, who defected to North Korea. The 1950 outbreak of the Korean War further interrupted his academic career.
Kim studied print in the United States and settled in Paris in 1969, where he first embarked on his monumental water drop painting titled "Evenement de la Nuit," a single magnified drop of water on the backdrop of the night sky, in 1972.
"The act of painting water drops is to dissolve all things within the water drops, to be returned to a transparent state of nothingness. By returning anger, anxiety, fear and everything else to emptiness, we experience peace and contentment. While some seek the enhancement of the ego, I aim toward the extinction of the ego and look for the method of expressing it," Kim said.
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| Artist Kim Tschang-yeul during the 2000s / Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Hyundai |
Gallery Hyundai was the first to introduce Kim's water drop paintings in Korea, who received acclaim in Paris in the 1970s.
"In Recurrence, the artist attempted to merge water drops that symbolize life, purity and purification and text that symbolizes reason, duty and civilization. The text that appears on the Recurrence series reveals a strong presence of water drops glisteningly painted on the canvas. Despite the vital significance of its content and formality and the considerable room for further interpretation, the text has not received well-deserved attention," an official of the gallery said.
About 30 pieces combining water drops and text are on view at the exhibition. The texts appeared in the water drop series as Kim tried to fill the canvas.
"When I started painting water drops, I used to work on the surfaces that show immediate materiality, such as rough canvas, wood and sand. However, as the picture plane grows bigger, the canvas becomes a barren field left behind when its materiality dissipates," Kim once said.
"Le Figaro" (1975) is the very first painting to feature text within the droplets. It came out of Kim's numerous experiments on drawing water drops on various surfaces, painting water droplets on the French newspaper. However as the artist felt a gap between the spirituality he pursued in water drops and the reality reflected in the newspaper, he turned to meaningless, abstract strokes instead of specific letters in the early stage of his text works.
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| Kim Tschang-yeul's "Le Figaro" (1975) / Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Hyundai |
Later, Kim mainly took phrases from the "Thousand-Character Classic" and "Tao Te Ching" by Laozi.
"I learned the Thousand-Character Classic from my grandfather before entering primary school. When I was around 60, I started to paint with the theme of Recurrence, which means going back. First, it means going back to childhood, and second, going back to the East," Kim said.
"The manner that Kim adopts in the Recurrence series, that is, densely filling out the background of traditional Korean paper with text, realizes the process of relinquishing himself into a state free of all ideas," the gallery official said.
The exhibit runs through Nov. 29. A reservation is required to visit the gallery.
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| Kim Tschang-yeul's "Recurrence PBL08007" (2008) / Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Hyundai |
