
807, 8/F, K11 ATELIER Victoria Dockside, 18 Salisbury Road,Tsim Sha Tsui view map
Floating World
group show
807, 8/F, K11 ATELIER Victoria Dockside, 18 Salisbury Road,Tsim Sha Tsui view map
Floating World
group show
Born in 1937 in Pyongan-bukdo, Sinuiju, Democratic People's Republic of Korea
Lives and works between Sokcho and Seoul, South Korea
Born in North Korea in 1937, Kim Chong Hak is an eminent figure in contemporary Korean art. Widely known as the “Painter of Seorak”, Kim evokes Mount Seorak—the third-highest mountain in Korea, situated in the east of the country— on his canvases with motifs from nature, such as flowers, insects, and weeds.
education
1962
- BFA Seoul National University
1968-70
- Studied Print, Tokyo University of the Arts, Ueno
1977
- Studied Print, Pratt Institute, New York
solo shows
2020
- Busan Museum of Art, Busan, South Korea
2019
- Vitality, Galerie Perrotin, Paris, France
2018
- Carte blanche à Kim Chong Hak, Musée Guimet, Paris, France
- Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
2016
- Vital Resonance, Johyun Gallery, Busan, South Korea
2015
- Winter solitude, Johyun Gallery, Busan, South Korea
- A Key to Creation Exhibition, SeMA Nam Seoul Living Art Museum, Seoul, South Korea
2013
- Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, South Korea
2012
- Gallery Hyundai, Seoul
, South Korea
- Gallery Yeh, Seoul, South Korea
2011
- Retrospective, National Museum Of Contemporary Art Korea, Gwacheon, South Korea
2008
- Gallery Yeh, Seoul, South Korea
2007
- Johyun Gallery, Busan, South Korea
2006
- Gana Art Center, Seoul, South Korea
- Galerie Gana, Paris, France
2004
- Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, South Korea
2003
- Gallery Yeh, Seoul, South Korea
2001
- Park Ryu Sook Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
1999
- Johyun Gallery, Busan, South Korea
1998
- Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, South Korea
1994
- Park Ryu Sook Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
1992
- Park Ryu Sook Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
- Johyun Gallery (Gallery World), Busan, South Korea
- Gallery Yeh, Seoul, South Korea
1990
- Sun Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
1988
- Park Ryu Sook Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
1987
- Sun Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
1985
- Won Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
1977
- Gallery Hyundai, Seoul
, South Korea
- M. M. Shino Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, USA
1974
- Muramazu Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
1970
- Muramazu Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
1964
- Press Center, Seoul, South Korea
group shows
2016
- The Muse, Her-story, Whanki Museum, Seoul & Ewha Museum, Seoul, South Korea
- 130th Anniversary Special, Ewha Museum, Seoul, South Korea
2014
- In Between, Kumho Museum, Seoul, South Korea
- Flower, Flower, Flower, Gallery LeeBae, Busan, South Korea
2013
- Korean Contemporary Art, Ulsan Culture and Arts Center, Ulsan, South Korea
- Colourful Korea, Park Ryu Sook Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
2012
- Korean Archetype, Daegu Art Museum, Daegu, South Korea
2011
- Ulsan Culture and Arts Center, Ulsan, South Korea
2010
- 2010 In the Midst of Korean Contemporary Art, Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, South Korea
- Kim Chong Hak, Yun Kwang Jo, Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, South Korea
2009
- Requests the Beautiful World!, Gyeonghuigung Annex Building of the Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea
2008
- Good Morning, Mr. Nam June Paik, The Korean Cultural Service of London, London, UK
2005
- Flowers and Birds, Gana Art Center, Seoul, South Korea
- Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea
- Modern & Contemporary Masters, Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, South Korea
2003
- Lighting of Korean Contemporary Art: Gallery Yeh 25th Anniversary, Gallery Yeh, Seoul, South Korea
2002
- Two Artists: Kim Chong Hak, Itami Jun, Shukosha Reception Gallery Produced by M.A.P, Fukuoka, Japan
1999
- Three Artists: Kim Chong Hak, Kwak Hun, Kim Woong, Gallery Yeh, Seoul, South Korea
- FIAC, Gallery Hyundai, Paris, France
1993
- NICAF, Park Ryu Sook Gallery, Yokohama, Japan
- Vision in Between, New York, USA; Tokyo, Japan; Taipei, Taiwan; Seoul, South Korea
1990
- Four Artists: Kim Chong Hak, Oh Sufan, Shim Moon-Sup, Lee Young-Hak, Park Ryu Sook Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
1989
- Korean Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea
1988
- Korean contemporary Art, Olympic Park, Seoul, South Korea
1986
- Kim Chong Hak and Kim Woong, Gallery Yeh, Seoul, South Korea
1984
- National Museum of Contemporary Art Invitational Exhibition, Seoul, South Korea
1983
- National Museum of Contemporary Art Invitational Exhibition, Seoul, South Korea
1982
- Hugo Print Biennale, Ljubljana, Yugoslavia
1981
- Print Making, Korean Culture and Arts Foundation, Fine Arts Center, Seoul, South Korea
- Artists Today, Fine Arts Center, Seoul, South Korea
- Korean Art 81, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea
- The 30th National Art Contest, Guest of Honor, Seoul, South Korea
1980
- Korea Contemporary Prints Association, Seoul, South Korea
1979
- Korean Contemporary Print, ADI Gallery, San Francisco, CA, USA
1978
- East Coast Korean Artists, Asia Cultural Center, New York, NY, USA
1977
- The 26th National Art Contest, Guest of Honor, Seoul, South Korea
- Important Korean Artists, Chinese Historical Museum, Taipei, Taiwan
1975
- The 24th National Exhibtion Recommended Artists, Seoul, South Korea
- The 13th Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
1973
- The 12th Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
- Contemporary Art 73 Years Ago, Myeongdong Art Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
- Seoul Invitational Exhibition of 13, SignumArt Gallery, Japan
1972
- The 2nd Seoul International Print Biennale, Dong-A Daily News, Seoul, South Korea
1970
- An Open Air Exhibition of Japanese Contemporary Artists, Godomokuni Garden, Japan
- Contemporary Korean Art, India, Afghanistan, Nepal
1969
- The 1st International Biennial Copperplate Print, Buenos Aires, Argentina
1968
- Korean Contemporary Painting, National Museum of Moderan Art, Tokyo, Japan
- Contemporary Printmakers Association, Shinsegae Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
- The 9th International Biennial of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
1966
- Tokyo International Print Biennial, Tokyo, Japan
1965
- Ten Important Artists, Tokyo Modern Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan
- The 4th Biennale de Paris, Paris, France
- Modern Western Painting in South Korea, Joong-Ang Newspaper Co., Seoul, South Korea
1964
- The 5th Biennale de Paris, Paris, France
- Jeunes artistes coréens, Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris, France
- The 2nd Actuel, Gyeongbok Palace Museum, Seoul, South Korea
1963
- Prints Exhibition, Seoul, South Korea
1962
- Actuel Foundation, Gyeongbok Palace Museum, Seoul, South Korea
1960
- The 1st Exhibition of 60’s Artists Associtaion”, Deoksu Palace Stonewall, Seoul, South Korea
public collections
- Musée Guimet, Paris, France
- Leeum Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea
- National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea
- National Museum of Korea, Seoul, South Korea
- National Folk Museum of Korea, Seoul, South Korea
- Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea
- Busan Museum of Art, Busan, South Korea
- Museum of Art Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea
- Ehwa Museum, Seoul, South Korea
- Museum San, Wonju, South Korea
Finding the Path in the Mountain
by Ryoung Lee
1.
I feel that living a life creating something is a privilege for that someone. That life of creating something is of course lonely and weary, and sometimes scary, but you need to stand up as an individual to walk on paths that no one has ventured; nobody would know of the excitement in making your own path when there is no path.
In a letter to his daughter written in 1991, Kim Chong Hak remarked, “To my understanding, art is a wide path; it is inclusive of all things.” Under such conviction, Kim endeavoured to make up his own path and expanded it for the last 50 years. He climbed the pathless mountains, and roamed around the forest without the aid of human-trodden tracks. But all the hardship he encountered did not deter him from finding the path. Kim’s method was not something radical, but on the contrary, he resorted to the traditional way. While most of his fellow artists insisted on the absolute purity and rigour of abstract art, Kim returned to figuration. His associates rebuked him for his deviation from abstraction which the majority of the artists at that time implicitly believed was the edifice of pure art. On the other front, he was faced by Minjung art which was the figurative art of his time. Minjung art advocated the political inclination of art; they believed that art should be subjected to the political and the social cause. Enclosed by these antagonistic contemporaries, Kim Chong Hak started looking at flowers, trees, mountains, and the the sea. His choice was going backwards against the herd rather than proceeding ahead of times. However, his purpose was to walk, as he pleased, on the path others did not venture into, and he wanted to praise the glory of life in the name of nature. Kim’s such attitude also came as a response to the contemporary tendency that focused on seeking the novelty he was in search of an alternative language. He thought that contemporary art lost its sense of direction as it seemed to be addicted to the stimulation of peripheral nerves. Commenting on his solo show, the critic Oh Kwang Soo complimented the stature of Kim Chong Hak in the contemporary art scene of Korea by saying that, ’one sees through Kim Chong Hak’s painting the most painterly painting, especially in a time when the genre of paintings is being threatened.’
2.
For this exhibition, the paintings Kim drew since the latter part of 1950s were selected. He started painting in the 1950s, and his early works reflect what the Korean society was going through after the Civil War. There is a sense of loss and there are painful memories embedded in his works, and yet coupled to an optimistic mood expecting a new epoch, he experimented with imitating Western art. Abstraction-A Woman (1959), created during his study at the Seoul National University, is a work of a nude that he executed in the style of cubism, which reflects the scope and the contents of his college education. In 1960 when he was serving the army, he participated in the Exhibition of the Artists Association of 1960 with other fellow artists belonging to a younger generation. They hung lots of paintings on the stone walls surrounding the Deoksoo Palace. The exhibition was a sensational event. From the following year, Kim Chong Hak began to hang around at ‘Lee Bong Sang’s Art Research Centre’ in Anguk-dong, and made acquaintances with Park Seo Bo, Yoon Myoung Ro, Kim Tschang Yeul, and many others. He, like the other artists in that time, became enthusiastic about the Informel Art which marked the turning point in the history of Korean contemporary art. The enthusiasm and passion for creating the art was springing out of his youth. In 1962, Kim became a member of the group ‘Actuel’, and busied himself in organizing the first opening show. Although none of the exhibiting work remains, it is supposed that his works would have been under the influence of Abstract Expressionism, employing the intensive and vehement brush stroke and creating a thick and rough matiere. Work 603 (1963) or Abstraction (1970) stand witness to the fact that he strongly identified his own visual language with something very similar to the series of Primordial by Park Seo Bo.
From the early 1960s, the artists of his time started to become interested in print-making as a means of a different technique to experiment with. Kim also became preoccupied with the print work like his fellow artists. As a reason behind this sudden enthusiasm, a surge of exhibitions presenting the print works of the foreign artist abroad has been cited. Starting from the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, many print shows were held in Korea: The international Print Exhibition(1958), The Contemporary Print Exhibition of the West Germany(1958,1960), The Contemporary Print Exhibition of the United States(1959,1966,1968), The Contemporary Print Exhibition of Brazil(1963), and The Contemporary Print Exhibition of Japan(1970). It was hardly impossible to get hold of the original art works under the circumstances, and these exhibitions thus served a role as a window through which the local artists and the audience could catch a glimpse of the latest current of contemporary art of world outside of Korea. Kim Chong Hak participated in the exhibition Five Artists’ prints in 1963, which was the first print show organized by a local institution. This exhibition triggered his active engagement with print works. It seemed that he was focusing more on the prints rather than the paintings. Kim joined The Association of the Contemporary Print Artist of Korea as a founding member in 1968. At this exhibition, the museum featured his woodprint History for which he was awarded a prize at The 5th Tokyo International Print Biennale in 2006.
During the 1970s Kim tried various experiments with different genres; he had a hand at printmaking, and created a cutting-edge installation. Kim was even chosen as the Recommended Artist at the Kukjeon in 1975, which was widely recognized as proof for heralding a promising future as a full-time artist. However, he was not satisfied with the laurel. He left for America in 1977, to receive training at the Pratt Graphic Centre in New York. Not wanting to stay in his comfort zone, he saw the trip to New York as a way to escape. Although he had previously admired the Western abstract art, he ended up creating figurative art in America. The sight of a skyscraper of New York City executed in the traditional black ink on Hanji, traditional paper, still life in the tone of darkish grey, and some portraits were most of the works he made during his stay. Previously Kim’s family had accompanied him during his stay in Japan, and he was all alone in a foreign country this time, and as if reflecting the solitude he felt, the works he made in New York exuded gloominess. A few years later, in the autumn of 1979, he received shocking and unexpected news from Korea, which made him go back to his home earlier than he had planned. Soon after his return to Korea, a strange and impulsive passion drove him to leave Seoul for Seorak Mountain, and this made Kim Chong Hak into he is now.
3.
When you go to the Seorak Mountain, you do not go there only to see the mountain, but you also intrude the mystery of the universe, which pervades the Seorak Mountain, and one you are immersed in this magnificent inscrutability, the colour of your soul will change.
The novelist Lee Byung Joo paid homage to Seork Mountain as ‘the mountain as an art, and art as a mountain’ in his book ‘Eulogy of Seorak Mountain’. To Kim Chong Hak, whose nickname is known as the ‘Seorak artist’, it was in the Seorak Mountain that he experienced extreme frustration to the extent that he wanted to give up his life. This mountain was also where he restored his blazing passion for art. What Tahiti meant to Gauguin, and what Yosemite meant to Ansel Adams was what Seorak Mountain meant to Kim Chong Hak.
In the autumn of 1979, Kim Chong Hak left behind all the worldly affairs and escaped to the foot of the Seorak Mountain, where he became an anonymous wild human being amongst the nature. Like a raging, wild beast, he stalked the meadows and valleys of Seorak Mountain and tried to smoulder his anger and rancour. Kim even managed to endure the biting wind of winter. However, as he saw the sap of spring well up onto the earth, and the sprouting of leaves and flowers from the once lifeless and frozen ground, he suddenly found hope and was able to return to his abandoned paintbrush once again. His life was in tatters and this affected his soul greatly. As his wounded soul healed in the generous embrace of nature, it sublimated into his passion for art. As his bosom friend Song Young Bang pointed out, Kim Chong Hak’s entering of Seorak Mountain did not mean his return to nature, it was his “search for his new artistic discourse.”
Kim Chong Hak’s paintings are doused with the traces of exploring every valley and plain of the Seorak Mountain. Through this, he directly experienced nature with his own body and thus his art convey emotions that are stemmed from an alive, breathing nature. There is no sign of humans in his landscape paintings; there are no human lain paths and instead there are wild forests untrodden territory. In the Western tradition, landscape painting was divided into two categories: one represented the beauty of the sublime, which held the viewer in awe. The other represented the idealistic and picturesque meadows and countryside, reflecting comfort unto the viewers. However, Kim Chong Hak’s representation of nature does not suppress human beings to a state of fragile existence, nor does it whisper sweet words shrouded with romantic ambience. His art is rough and rustic but flamboyant, and the way the focus of the structure is scattered helps to strongly pull at human emotions. The canvas is saturated with raw nature, where Kim tries to uncover the mysterious hidden path; the primitive vitality of nature struggles against the artist’s vigorous spirit. This is the realm of Kee-woon-seng-dong(氣韻生動, the spirit of vital movement) which the artist is in pursuit of, and the realm of deity, which is full of heroic masculinity. Although it is a fragile, effeminate flower, the way Kim swishes his brush creating thick, bold lines alters this into a much more masculine landscape especially so in his work ‘Man-wha-bang-seok’ where he filled up the whole canvas with depictions of colourful flowers in the same way as the traditional cushion(called ‘bang-seok’) was fully embroidered with flower patterns. All the flowers, grass, birds and butterflies stay distinct and independent, revealing a sense of the individual existence. These elements of nature sing in the grand voice of integration and the harmony, diffusing the sensation of dense lusciousness. This show presents his big works such as No.7, Paradise and No.5, Kingfishers on the Brook, and they have the impact to usher the viewers into the picture and enclose around them. Thus, the viewers find themselves suddenly jumping into the Seorak Mountain, and transferred into the main characters of the verdant feast of mid-summer. They can feel every movement of the artist within the picture. Whereas the appreciation of the contemporary abstract painting has been reduced to the optical experience only, Kim Chong Hak’s description of nature is synaesthetic; the mere visual engagement also stimulates faculties of other sensations. One feels tempted to touch the patals of flowers as the colours look as if a delicate layer of a kneaded lump of colour has been laid on by the artist; it beckons one’s tactile desire. Additionally the fragrance from the flowers in the forest assails one’s olfactory sense. There is one more – the image of cascade reminds the viewers of the exhilarating crashing of a waterfall.
Kim Chong Hak’s landscape paintings convey a way of nature – birth, growing and perishing – that is embodied in the rotation of the four seasons. He embraces a sunny day of spring, in the festival of flowers on the surface of the ‘Man-hwa-bang-seok’. Here, life grows along the meandering brook of a green summer and it then dwindles off into the shadow of a dry, faded autumn. The pine tree is set into the white pristine snow, with its grit ferociously standing up against winter. Through the period of the interphase, during which all life is forced to hold its breath, akin to the state of death – nature gathers up the energy that helps to generate life which has been destroyed; two opposite energies coexist within the nature. In this regard, Kim’s painting is a metaphor of the strength of life which squirms around deep under the earth, the façade of that is nothing but wizened, scrawny branches. Thus, his art endorses the potential of life and its blessing. Paradoxically speaking, nature is perhaps more vital in winter. The winter branches are stripped off of their rich green leaves of summer, baring their bones and the will of life shoots upwards into the sky. The paradoxical vitality of winter applies to Kim Chong Hak’s painting, which represents the wintry aspect of the Seorak Mountain, where the powerful backbones of the mountain are exalted through the layers of snow, and the divine spirit which is nestled in every fold of valleys and ridges manifests itself. His snowy Seorak paintings make an interesting contrast with his flower paintings. In the flower paintings, he makes a repetitious close-up of each subject, and as a result, the distance between the viewer and the object drawn on the canvas is infinitely reduced. The picture plane is densely crowded with the flowers against the background of the mountain, the presence of which is hidden and unfelt. In comparison, eliminating the minute description of the flowers, the artist employs the distance between the snowy scene of the Seorak Mountain and the viewer, in an attempt to capture the scene as a whole. The overall composition counts more, and the viewer is led to observe the interesting relations of the individual and the entirety. Kim’s summer flower paintings enjoy popular affection, yet the plastic beauty of the composition in his works on the snowy Seorak Mountain – yielded by abstract exceeds the former’s merit.
Kim Chong Hak said that his own art had started from abstraction. Nonetheless, he defines his art as ‘new figuration that is based upon the abstract art.’ The notion of the ‘abstractive figuration’ has resonance of the meaning of ‘reinvented realism’, which was put forward by Francis Bacon. According to Bacon, an artist can capture a more truthful reality by means of consciously altering the images of reality and thus rendering it inaccurate. He named Vincent van Gogh as the pioneer of such concept. In other words, an abstract attitude is required, in order to understand and visualize the inner intensity of reality. By boldly omitting the details and concisely reconstructing the essence, Kim does not merely transcribe the real scenes of nature, but also records the operation of the conscious which is related to the accumulation of the strata of memory.
4.
Oscar Wilde once remarked that there had been no fog in London before James Whistler painted it. One can reflect on the Seorak Mountain in a similar vein. The landscape in Kim Chong Hak’s paintings goes beyond the geographical criterion; it is not confounded within the Seorak Mountain and it expands to the rivers and the mountains of Korea, and even further, to nature in general. Therefore, the earth ensconced in the heart of the universe. Kim’s landscape painting is not about the gaze of those who are entertained by nature’s delightful features. Rather, his works are what the people utter whilst they live as a part of nature; it comes from his own existence of standing firm on the ground for life and it is the narration of genius loci, and the ode to nature. Moreover, his art manifests a reverence for ‘being alive and living’. Kim’s stay in the Seorak Mountain overlaps his experience of overcoming the crisis of his life as well as his search for ‘a broad path of truth’ in a new aesthetical vision. Just as the moon waxes and wanes, lives continue in the eternal procession of birth and death. Regardless of the absence and perishing, nature repeats her course; the path will endlessly witness the spring flowers returning to bloom.
Kim Chong Hak
by Yoon Jung Choi
The paintings of Kim Chong Hak start with his activities as a number of Actuel in his early days alongside his colleagues, embracing Western Modernism. Initially attempting to learn to follow the Western model, Kim ends up wanting to escape from a tautology that merely pursues formalism without generating deeper meaning. He grows skeptical towards creation and the attitude towards creation in the process of embracing and practicing Western from and tendencies, and from this stems an intense internal conflict. This is a critical matter that pertained to determining the very life as an artist. The psychological pain he endured as a human being due to personal matters that contingently set in may have acted as a catalyst to sprout his honesty caught in the abyss and will towards pure creation, Mt. Seorak – a place he visited to live out what lay within him – was a natural drawing board on which he could expressively spread out his will and sentiments. In his transition to representational painting, a narrative of the things of the folk arts cannot be omitted. This is because though his work paints pure nature which in turn is designated as a medium for his emotional empathy, the expressive aspect of his work is also intimately linked to the artist’s fascination with the beauty of folk art.
Proportional beauty and the formative structure offered by the nameless artisan of the old does not fall behind the sensibilities of contemporary art. This is when Kim becomes a collector of woodenware. Displaying a fondness for traditional handicraft as well as woodenware, Kim found his inspiration for his color sensibilities as an artist from folk art elements. “Some of the typical artists that realized the bright colors of the traditional era were traditional embroideries on pillow ends, pockets and utensil cases, The background colors of the embroideries – red, black, purple and blue – appear as motifs. (···) Even in terms of the arrangement of colors, the fact that complementary colors are great reinforcement for Kim. As one midst of frequently sees in Kim’s works where a red flower appears in the midst of bluish green trees and grass-covered fields, the arrangement of complementary colors yields a vivid impression. This is because of the effect brought about when the color nerves of the retina is stimulated by a certain color, heightening the sensitivity to its complimentary color. This is not all. His screen is fraught with a vivacious temperament of ‘lively energy’, diffused in the brilliant colors, homogenized form, and the flatness that comes from it. This kind of expression of ‘lively energy’ goes beyond the technical aspect of the folk art style and is closely related to the artist’s ‘way of life’. Leaving the secular world to live in Mt. Seorak in the late 70’s, the artist lived a life of the natural man, painting spring during spring, summer during summer, autumn during autumn, and winter during winter. But this was not a bucolic return to nature but itself a journey fraught with agony, embarked to search for his own topic and driven by the artistic will to seek creation. “Perhaps because of the white snow, the night isn’t too dark. Daddy is most happy right now. To create is a privilege enjoyed only by someone who walks the path of creation. It is, of course, lonely and weary and sometimes frightening, but no one knows the thrill of walking the path no one is willing to walk, or rather creating a pathway where there was previously no path.” The life of wild herb, the wriggling feast of the vines and the nameless colors offered by nature are uttered through the flowers. What could his failing random brush strokes say? “He registers an esquisse in the memory the subject matters that pass by like a flash. And in the process of the sudden transferring of such onto the canvas, one sees on the screen his unrestrained sentiment. As his latent consciousness of form and folk inspiration that can be called Korean primitiveness melts into an innocent and childlike fantasy, a distinct world of naivety of his own ripens.”
Drawing Spring in Spring
by Tae Ho Lee
Splendor of Korean Colors
Created by Kim, Chong Hak with the collaboration of Insa-dong and Seorak
Instruction
It has been said that a painting is the painter himself. This comes from the old belief that a poem or a writing is the poet or the writer herself. Not restricted to writings or paintings, this philosophy applies to any field of art including music, dance, and play the artist’s nature, disposition and life are reflected wholly in her artwork. This was the first thing that popped up in my head when I looked through the works Kim Chong Hak had created in last fifty years. It was because the paintings from the early 1960s the recent years all reflects all of who Kim Chong Hak is as a human being.
Kim is a painter in his mid-70s who was made famous in the art world by his paintings of Mt. Seorak and flowers. His artistic world and place in the history of Korean art is so well-established that many consider him to be the representative of Korean art today. As I look at the drawings, etchings, still-lives, ink-and-wash paintings, and oil paintings he has created in the las fifty years, I realize his artistic world is by no means simple. He is unbelievably prolific; it would not be an exaggeration to call him the Picasso of Korea. As of now, he is probably the most prolific artist in Korea.
He immersed himself in many different forms of paintings in his youth like the Western-style art and other trendy –isms. After he begun to appreciate Korea’s traditional aesthetics, he communicated with Korea’s nature by focusing on Mt. Seorak. And somewhere along the way, he has unfolded the splendor of Korea’s unique colors in front of us by interesting with his passionate and forceful personality the nature residing in Mt. Seorak and the traditional beauty residing in Insa-dong. In this way, Kim’s art owes its existence to Korea’s natural surroundings and traditional aesthetics. Looking at his art, one cannot help but be reminded of the beauty and the greatness of our natural resources and culture.
Perusing through Kim’s life’s work, I found the solid basis for his sense of plasticity. I was also forced to acknowledge the greatness of his artistic spirit that made him an artist through the core. I was almost befuddled by the fact that the various changes he went through consistently pointed to his childlike innocence and simplicity. “Innocent and pure.” in particular, is the phrase he used almost as a motto.
2020
Sophie CALLE, Johan CRETEN, Bernard FRIZE, Laurent GRASSO, Thilo HEINZMANN, KIM Chong-Hak, LEE Bae, Georges MATHIEU, Jean-Michel OTHONIEL, Park Seo-Bo, Maria TANIGUCHI, Xavier VEILHAN
November 24, 2020 - February 6, 2021
hong kong
807, 8/F, K11 ATELIER Victoria Dockside, 18 Salisbury Road,Tsim Sha Tsui
Floating World
2019
KIM Chong-Hak
March 16 - May 11, 2019
paris
76 RUE DE TURENNE 75003 PARIS
Vitality