Page 6 - 김연식 개인전 2023 5. 5. 30 갤러리모나리자 산촌

The Art of Jeongsan Kim YeonSik

Like the Fingerprint of Nature, or of a Landscape

Kho Chunghwan, Art Critic

Like the ebb and flow of waves with spray. The twinkling ripples on the surface of the water. A tidal wave. A sea current. An air
current. Like the eye of a storm. A tornado. A whirlwind. Green algae. Red algae. Oil slick spreading on water. Like the layers of bark
on a tree. The layers of time. The strata. The fault. Like the contour lines. A canyon. A valley. A salt mountain. Like an aerial map. An
ocean map. A geological map. Like the cross-section of a gemstone. The rumanite. The surface texture of marble. Like a meteorite.
The shooting stars. Like the surface texture of the Moon. Northern Lights. Like the nacre reflecting light. Like the stalactites
hanging in a hollow cave. Like the lava flowing down with fire. A volcano. Like a parched field, or dried-up moss on a rock. Stains
of rain. The texture of the wall with paint smudged off by raindrops. Like the trace of time through fades, or atypical stains. Like a
reptile’s scat. Like the Big Bang. The Black Hole that gobbled up existence, or the White Hole that generates existence. Like chaos.
Like the unexpected and uncontrolled burst of vitality. Like a wavelength. A ripple. A fingerprint of nature. A fingerprint of a
landscape. A fingerprint of existence. Like the boundary created by the clash of energies.

What are all these? Changing at each gaze, and differing perceptions of individuals looking at the same artwork. The reason? We
all have different interests, come from different backgrounds, and have learned different things. Therefore, we look at the same
thing but we see disparate things. This happens even from an individual looking at one thing at different times. Does this mean
that the objective reality is nonexistent? This cannot be, then why such a phenomenon? The shapes in a painting may be asking
this exact question, the meaning of the act of seeing.

There is nothing obvious in a painting, and it has no definable shape. There are just what look like OO, shapes that are implied,
potential, in process. There is only a triggering factor in the silence before formation. There are only forms that prepare forms,
hence the preliminary forms. All paintings are the representation of OO and not actually OO; merely a futile idea that wants to be
OO itself. That is the fate of a painting and the fate of a shape. Perhaps Kim YeonSik’s paintings depict their such fate, and the fate
of the shapes within.

Kim’s paintings reminisce about the natural scenery. They recall the ideological landscape. They suggest the microscopic and
the macroscopic view. The natural landscape we believe to be a sensory reality is limited to the distance as far as our senses and
consciousness can perceive. Beyond that distance, whether macroscopic or microscopic, the boundary between the abstraction
and the conceptual blurs, suggesting that they already had each other as their innate nature. Kim’s paintings may be depicting
such ambivalence of shapes.

If so, has Kim painted nature, or naturality? Aristotle the philosopher of nature (384-322 BC) distinguished nature (physics) from
naturality (natura), seeing the source of sensory nature, meaning nature itself, from naturality. For Koreans, this can be considered
equivalent to the concept of "gi (氣, spirit, energy)". Nature is the operation of gi and its movement transferred into the sensory
form. Kim’s paintings may have depicted gi’s such activity, therefore, he had painted naturality.

Hence, seeing Kim YeonSik’s artwork feels like stealing a glimpse of the primeval moment when the universe was just being
created, or watching the dramatic scenery of nature bursting out the unexpected and uncontrolled vitality. It is also like catching
the scene of the abstract and the conceptual knocking down the boundary between, the macro world and the micro world
osmosed, where the sensory and the conceptual realities blend into one. It is like looking at a landscape in transition from form to

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