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拍品專文
Drawing waterdrops, explains Kim, is the art of melting everything into nothing, the state necessary to achieve true tranquility. Droplet and plain canvas create a radiant harmony that is its own unique universe.
Kim developed the waterdrop on canvas in Paris in the winter of 1972-73, after four years at the Art Students League in New York. He had found little to inspire him in the Pop Art scene and consumer culture of that city. While much has been made of Kim's familiarity with Zen Buddhism, he did not begin the waterdrops series with a philosophical or meditative message; rather he uses painting as a practice of repetition, much as a chant is designed to release the mind from thought in order to gain clarity. He has also remarked that the waterdrops may be seen as memorials for the dead in the Korean War--sprinklings of holy water as individual, delicate and indelible as those who perished.
Kim begins each painting with a paper stencil of the waterdrops that he applies to the canvas. With an airbrush or brush he makes a silhouette of each droplet, careful to show the uniform direction of his light source. Next, he reverses the paper model to brush the light and shadow within the drop, usually using light orange or umber tinged with grey or brown, as here. Kim may dab a little white with a fingertip to make the light reflection more intense. Each waterdrop is different; some are round, some oblong, some static, some flowing, up to forty different variations of one another. The magical rhythm established among the different waterdrops and the canvas has affinities with the relation of ink to paper of classical Chinese calligraphy, an element Kim began to incorporate into his work around the time this Waterdrops was painted. As with calligraphy, the ground is not subordinate to the painting; it is an empty but active space that gives the imagery form.
Kim lives and works in the Montparnasse quarter of Paris and in Draguignan in the south of France. He spends two or so months a year at his home on Mount Bugak outside Seoul in a deep, basement studio lit by skylights, where the man who doesn't much like to talk can "live like a hermit in a cave." The artist was born into a prosperous family in the farm village of Maengsan in North Korea and was tutored in the Chinese classics and orthography by his grandfather. When Kim was twelve, the family moved to Seoul and then to Jeju Island to distance themselves from the war. He embarked on what was then considered the dubious career of artist after graduating from university and winning a Rockefeller Foundation grant to study in New York. A year's stay turned into what Kim has called a "nightmare" of four, speaking no English, making expressionist art that was avant-garde in Korea and passé in America and paying the rent with odd jobs. To fill time he would get together with other struggling compatriots and drink.
A second Rockefeller grant in 1969 set up Kim to promote American art in Korea. On his way home Kim decided to stop in Europe, realizing after landing in Paris that this was where he needed to work. With the help of his wife, Martine, an art teacher, Kim persevered, eventually achieving success in a modest exhibition of twenty Waterdrops paintings within a Knoll furniture show. Dali dropped by with Catherine Deneuve. Journalists and galleries started to take notice. A 1976 solo show at Hyundai Gallery in Seoul was sold out. The canvases grew larger and the waterdrops more contrasting, painted in brush by oils in place of acrylics by airbrush, which he found toxic. For four decades Kim has pushed against the confines of aesthetic language with paintings and installations that are prized for their limpid beauty and seductive mystery.
Since 1957 Kim Tschangyeul has had numerous one-person and group exhibitions in Korea, Japan, the United States and Europe. He exhibited at the 2nd Paris Biennale in 1961 and at the 8th Sao Paulo Biennale in 1965. From 1972 to 1976 he participated in the Salon de Mai, Paris. In 1976 and 1979, he had one-person exhibitions at Hyundai Gallery, Seoul. He also exhibited at the Tate Gallery, Liverpool, in 1992 and he had a retrospective at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, in 1993. In 1994, he held another retrospective at the Sunje Museum, Kyungju, Korea. Solo exhibitions of Kim's work were mounted at the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Pomme, Paris, in 2004, and in Beijing in 2005.
Kim developed the waterdrop on canvas in Paris in the winter of 1972-73, after four years at the Art Students League in New York. He had found little to inspire him in the Pop Art scene and consumer culture of that city. While much has been made of Kim's familiarity with Zen Buddhism, he did not begin the waterdrops series with a philosophical or meditative message; rather he uses painting as a practice of repetition, much as a chant is designed to release the mind from thought in order to gain clarity. He has also remarked that the waterdrops may be seen as memorials for the dead in the Korean War--sprinklings of holy water as individual, delicate and indelible as those who perished.
Kim begins each painting with a paper stencil of the waterdrops that he applies to the canvas. With an airbrush or brush he makes a silhouette of each droplet, careful to show the uniform direction of his light source. Next, he reverses the paper model to brush the light and shadow within the drop, usually using light orange or umber tinged with grey or brown, as here. Kim may dab a little white with a fingertip to make the light reflection more intense. Each waterdrop is different; some are round, some oblong, some static, some flowing, up to forty different variations of one another. The magical rhythm established among the different waterdrops and the canvas has affinities with the relation of ink to paper of classical Chinese calligraphy, an element Kim began to incorporate into his work around the time this Waterdrops was painted. As with calligraphy, the ground is not subordinate to the painting; it is an empty but active space that gives the imagery form.
Kim lives and works in the Montparnasse quarter of Paris and in Draguignan in the south of France. He spends two or so months a year at his home on Mount Bugak outside Seoul in a deep, basement studio lit by skylights, where the man who doesn't much like to talk can "live like a hermit in a cave." The artist was born into a prosperous family in the farm village of Maengsan in North Korea and was tutored in the Chinese classics and orthography by his grandfather. When Kim was twelve, the family moved to Seoul and then to Jeju Island to distance themselves from the war. He embarked on what was then considered the dubious career of artist after graduating from university and winning a Rockefeller Foundation grant to study in New York. A year's stay turned into what Kim has called a "nightmare" of four, speaking no English, making expressionist art that was avant-garde in Korea and passé in America and paying the rent with odd jobs. To fill time he would get together with other struggling compatriots and drink.
A second Rockefeller grant in 1969 set up Kim to promote American art in Korea. On his way home Kim decided to stop in Europe, realizing after landing in Paris that this was where he needed to work. With the help of his wife, Martine, an art teacher, Kim persevered, eventually achieving success in a modest exhibition of twenty Waterdrops paintings within a Knoll furniture show. Dali dropped by with Catherine Deneuve. Journalists and galleries started to take notice. A 1976 solo show at Hyundai Gallery in Seoul was sold out. The canvases grew larger and the waterdrops more contrasting, painted in brush by oils in place of acrylics by airbrush, which he found toxic. For four decades Kim has pushed against the confines of aesthetic language with paintings and installations that are prized for their limpid beauty and seductive mystery.
Since 1957 Kim Tschangyeul has had numerous one-person and group exhibitions in Korea, Japan, the United States and Europe. He exhibited at the 2nd Paris Biennale in 1961 and at the 8th Sao Paulo Biennale in 1965. From 1972 to 1976 he participated in the Salon de Mai, Paris. In 1976 and 1979, he had one-person exhibitions at Hyundai Gallery, Seoul. He also exhibited at the Tate Gallery, Liverpool, in 1992 and he had a retrospective at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, in 1993. In 1994, he held another retrospective at the Sunje Museum, Kyungju, Korea. Solo exhibitions of Kim's work were mounted at the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Pomme, Paris, in 2004, and in Beijing in 2005.