Page 11 - 김남표 개인전 2023. 5. 10 – 5. 30 나마갤러리

Kim Nampyo instantly manifests empty fullness. It is because he thought that this was the only way to pay tribute to the abstract personality of painting, in
quality of artist. The artist tries to represent the moonlit night by lifting the velvet threads using pins, but this is not a simple representation (depiction). The artist
intends to draw not only himself, but also everyone who sees it, into the time of the past. It is the artist's “gesture of re-placement” hoping that the ontological
experience in the time of empty fullness will be restored. Here, the expression “re-placement” means the resurrection of a place that used to be once full. This is
the reason for which the artist gives the concept of “instant” to all the themes in the painting. An instant landscape, that is, a landscape you see right before your
eyes, meets the totality of the past that exists in a latent state to become an instant landscape. It becomes a state that you have just faced. It becomes a state
you have just experienced.

In this regard, it is necessary to pay attention to one thing. I once discovered a new possibility of painting in the series <Sunflowers> of Kim Nampyo. The
sunflowers were withering away lowering their heavy heads on one of the days of changing season from autumn to winter. The sunflowers, named “向日葵子
(Hyangilgyuja)” in Chinese characters, with a scientific name “Helianthus annuus L,” are not looking at the sun but instead looking at the ground with its head
down. looking somewhat discouraged. A person on the verge of death also looks at the trajectory of his/her life, in other words, the earth, rather than looking at
the outside world. The sunflowers before death seem feeble due to the weight of life, but, in reality, they are not. The aspect was from the moment right before
sowing a huge number of seeds imbued with life into the ground. Humans also prove everything through the moment of death. We convey all the facts of
life experienced during the lifetime as well as the holistic belief of life through death. This belief is supposed to be passed on to another form of belief. For this
reason, we call it the impossibility of death. Therefore, the artist’s moonlit night and sunflowers lead to a special meaning. The moonlit night is a trace of sunlight
reflected onto the surface of the moon. The world the artist wants to express can be explained as follows:

There is a principle of the invisible universe (nature) that exists beyond the actions of our senses and perceptions as well as reason, judgment (verstand),
and spirit that work for our thinking abilities. In life, we can have two reactions to this. The first attitude is about ignorance of the world that is beyond the
phenomena because the phenomena are a substantive expression of power. The second attitude is about humbleness towards the unknown world because
the visible phenomena are only an extremely minor part of the universe. The former is a closed attitude, while the latter is an open one. The former views the
world as “a site” or “a scene.” On the other hand, the latter sees the world as “a place.” “A place’ is a world of the divine dimension that is supposed to change into
a protean according to a person's attitude, perspective, and level of understanding. It's a world of transcendence. The world where painting has been racing
so far has been a state of hierarchical transcendence. We call this “the vertical sublime.” However, British philosopher, Philip Kitcher (1947-) states that, in our
contemporary time, the horizontal sublime should be put into practice rather than the vertical sublime asserted by religion realm.

“Thoroughly secular people can interpret the purpose of their lives, not through some ”vertical” links to a dimly understood transcendent reality but through
“horizontal” connections to a natural world that is vaster than their own individual existence, Through your implicit recognition of yourself as part of a world,
including most importantly other human lives, on which your actions make an impact, the epiphany can be a rich source of broader connections.” 3)

Kim Nampyo does not speak about any kind of religious dimensions. However, he is an essentialist and a true painting-oriented artist, in the sense that he
believes that the sublime should be eternal in painting, He is a soul who practices the horizontal sublime in that he believes the necessity of feeling and
searching for the sublime in reality. This is precisely not only the question that the artist had asked to the history of painting and artists from the previous
generation, but also the answer he had got from them. This is the beginning moment of the world that Kim Nampyo intends to speak about. It is because the
horizontal world also unfolds boundlessly.

Lee Jin-myung (Art critic & Specialist in Aesthetics and East Asian Studies )

3) Kitcher, Philip, Preludes to Pragmatism: Toward a Reconstruction of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 284.:

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