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| Installation view of artist Kim Gil-hu's solo exhibition, "The Night of Chaos," at Hakgojae Art Center / Courtesy of Hakgojae Art Center |
By Park Han-sol
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| Artist Kim Gil-hu / Courtesy of Hakgojae Art Center |
The brushstrokes that traverse artist Kim Gil-hu's paintings let viewers' imaginations run wild, allowing them to witness two conflicting elements simultaneously within the same pitch-black canvas: fire and water, life and death.
"When a cloud moves across the sky, its shape is ever-shifting, sometimes resembling the silhouette of a human and other times a tiger. But no one deliberately molded it that way. My painting is just like that," Kim said at his solo exhibition, "The Night of Chaos," at Hakgojae Art Center in Jongno District, Seoul.
His free-spirited strokes ― which art critic Yoon Jin-sup likens to "the quick fire of a gunman in Western films" and "the swordsmanship of the fighters in Korean historical dramas" ― have been captured in 23 of his paintings and sculptures on display.
For years, the 60-year-old painter has been on a search to discover and define his creative identity, notably through his own extreme actions. In 1999, he set fire to the entire set of his works ― all 16,000 of them. He then cut himself off from the outside world, burying himself in his new mode of creation. A decade later, in 2013, he changed his name from Kim Dong-ki to Kim Gil-hu.
Kim said at the gallery that his newly exhibited works offer his own version of the answer to the age-old question regarding the true meaning of art.
When standing in front of a blank white canvas, the artist frees himself from the idea of how or what to draw. He instead leaves everything to his signature 15-centimeter-wide flat paintbrush, which reflects the natural rhythm of his breath and the intuitive movement of his hand.
"The most important aspect of my work is to erase my own being, my conscious self from it," Kim emphasized. "It is not 'I, Kim Gil-hu,' but the brush that completes my painting."
The spontaneous brushstrokes thus remain "untainted" by his ego. Only without the artist's deliberate insertion of himself, he explains, can the panting truly touch the heart of the audience without forcing his emotions upon them.
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| Kim's "Untitled" (2014), left, and "Untitled" (2021) / Courtesy of Hakgojae Art Center |
But although Kim tries to guard himself against inserting himself into his artwork, it always seems to slip in at the most unexpected moment.
When asked about a small section of sprinkled white paint in "Untitled" (2021), the artist admitted that it was added on purpose after he finished painting the piece, as he felt something was still missing.
"Because it's possible for my conscious thought to intervene in my creation at any given moment, I need to be on the lookout every time I look at an empty canvas and constantly push myself to reach that state of forgetting myself," he writes in the author's note.
As a result, for Kim, speed is of the essence, so as to not allow even a single thought to enter his mind. With the paintbrush, he strikes the canvas like a flash of lightning, often to the point of breaking its handle. He also applies a wide range of colors with just a single brush, following his hand to choose whichever one feels right at that moment, instead of using a separate brush for each color.
"The point is to strive to not even give the acrylic paint enough time to roll down the canvas during the drawing process ― although it inevitably happens sometimes ― by capturing the essence of the work in a flash," he explained.
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| Kim's "Laozi's Staff" (2019) / Courtesy of Hakgojae Art Center |
In 2016, the artist felt that working with paintings alone didn't feel fresh and original, thus, he began to expand his philosophy to three-legged series of sculptures. These include "Laozi's Staff," the only titled piece of the entire exhibition, made of plywood and cardboard.
Kim's art has for long been relatively overlooked in the domestic art scene. It was after he became the recipient of the 11th Artist Award of the Korean Association of Art Critics last April that his oeuvre garnered renewed attention from critics and enthusiasts alike.
"The Night of Chaos" runs through Aug. 22 at Hakgojae Art Center, with 20 additional paintings of Kim's on display in the gallery's online viewing room.
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