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(Bottom from
right) Intimate Reflections
#066, #069, #065. #067, #068, 2007,
47" x 15" |
Like Robert Rauschenberg’s minimalist aesthetic Kim’s
immaculate métier calls our attention to its beautiful
clarity but far from being simple it partakes of the complexity
of the post-neo-avant-garde dialogue which rather than being
dualistic is dialectical. Kim’s paintings are built
up in layers of fine gesso and color and his content is always
at the forefront. Like Rauschenberg’s erased DeKooning
they are far from minimalist exercises. It took Rauschenberg
one month to erase the DeKooning drawing composed of ink,
greasy crayon, and pencil finally leaving a shadow of its
previous subject. No matter how he tried to erase it completely
in an effort to do away with DeKooning’s mark of labor
thus his identity, he ended up with the shadow of his own
efforts. Kim’s subjects may be seen in outline but they
phase in and out in passages that seem to disappear and appear
at random. Consequently they both engage the viewer in dialogue
as well as breaking with their conversation at will. In this
sense, Kim is like Rauschenberg who made such great effort
to discover what ‘non-marking’ was and instead
ended up with another work.
Far from accidental Kim’s paintings always involved
layering, evincing at times, under-painted shadows, or some
evidence of human presence within his monumental glossy surfaces.
In his older series On the Edge Kim was interested in posing
the human figure as disparate anatomical part, a foot for
example, on a sharp dangerous precipice suggestive of life’s
perils. In his more recent series Presences/Absences Kim dealt
with the concept of inferred viewer seeing space as if looking
from different angles. Fun mirror angles of bathroom, or floor
tiles conflated to produce a dizzying array of angles from
which the human sensibility tried to recover. In this latest
oeuvre Intimate Reflections, Kim shows us that he has reached
his maturity as an artist and has resolved the issue of the
figure in space. As the artist says he felt “some kind
of barrier between the object and himself, the building and
space, from person to person, negative and positive, implicit
and explicit. My glossy surfaces and use of silhouettes offer
me a clue towards resolution. After I finish each work I put
one more final coat on the painting that results in a type
of bifurcation between its surface and its surrounding environment.
This bifurcation can represent time and space, past and present
or a moment combining present and past.” Kim’s
new work challenges viewer perception both in its mysterious
fading in and out as well as with its erasure of the human
hand.
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: Michael Yuge at tci@tenri.org
or call at 212-645-2800, or the curator Dr. Thalia Vrachopoulos
at thaliav@juno.com or call at 212-691-7978.
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