Page 9 - 김희재 초대전 2023. 8. 16 – 9. 15 일조원갤러리

green roses pass the forest of illusion to represent the auspicious and disastrous events leading to recognition while the East is based on wisdom. Along with this, the Westerner’s fundamental structure
enlightenment and the process of resurrection. of awareness likes to separate and dissect everything. I.e., Christianity basically contrasts the Creator with
White is an empty lot in an ambivalent sense. I.e., white, simultaneously both dyeable and un-dyable in the created and God with other entities. However, Easterners contradict that separation and emphasize
any color, is an image of Kim Heejae’s highest reverence and fortitude. White neutralizes the differences harmony. Just as India’s Brahman son Siddhartha left his home for the path of asceticism, Painter Kim
between the three primary colors from their center. Therefore, it is a complete foundation color and a hue Heejae must have also entered the path of exploration upon being inspired regarding what the self is as a
conducting change of an eternal recurrence ending and beginning with it. Therefore, the white cloud can member of the art world.
be considered artistically metonymic for the artistic soul engraved in her unconscious. The direction point The liberation of the true self should be based on true knowledge and universal truths. The original
condensed as a cloud is also the painter’s spiritual catharsis. We can glimpse how Painter Kim Heejae’s attitude of Eastern thought is in trying to view everything as a whole. The concepts of the Brahman in
pictures are symbolizing unity between Earth and the heavens simultaneously with a flight from land to Hinduism and Tao in Taoism signify all indivisible wholes. I.e., all units and the self are the same as the
the sky, even in the base of colors as such. entire universe, as opposed to being entities distinguished from the world, objects, and the universe.
Further, God and people, the mind and matter, you and I, and substance and phenomena are not mutually
A Complete Harmony of Presence and Absence, and the Genuine and Worldly opposing entities, but ones unified as one. Precisely this oneness thought could be interpreted as the
Kim Heejae’s paintings are usually born from intense confrontation between the end of loneliness, central philosophy and metaphysics of Kim Heejae’s art realm.
despair, and solitude. The end finally completed in this intense mental contest is the descent of the According to Freud’s psychoanalysis, people’s ethical anguish and decisions stem from schisms between
cloud paradise. Having wrapped herself in a white cloud, she embraces the free soul Wonhyo, the end of the super-ego as an internalized norm and the realistic self.
conclusion, and not Zhuangzi, who has become one with all objects in his butterfly dream. This is unity
between the heavens and people and a completion of freedom. “Love no longer makes me cry./ There is only the quietly revering eye.// ~~The mystery that is the ability to
In the present society, in which an unstoppable view of humanity dominates, Commentary on the become so calm/ Where does it come from?// ~(“Lake,” Lee Hyung-Ki)
Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana, Wonhyo’s teachings on the mind, is the final nirvana people should
attain. The thought and truth he realized after drinking rotten water from a corpse was that all distinctions Kim Heejae’s paintings approach us with great impressiveness. Such paintings really cannot be made if
between clean and unclean, like and dislike, and good and bad, etc. come from one’s heart instead of the painter is not moved. Painter Kim’s such works are probably unique in the whole world, nay, the entire
objects themselves being divided into dual categories. I.e., he realized that all distinguishing boundaries universe. One can glimpse Painter Kim also absorbed in jubilation and passion while being stirred by her
are in his heart instead of being in objective objects. Kim Heejae’s recent pictures are as such. The secret works. It is truly fortuitous and a miracle we can meet a painter through such a soul in our times!
she is showing us in her paintings is a discussion on the mind, an art realm of the phenomenology of
wholeheartedness. Her artistic spirit has finally arrived at devotion after writhing and wandering in search
of the substance of pure enlightenment. I.e., it has returned to its original self from people’s self-alienation.
It is singly clear and clean as it is departed from the relative concept of presence versus absence. It is thus
completely harmonizing all oppositions in the sea of the three voids, such as the genuine versus the
worldly, and existing relaxed and free on a cloud. This is the image of the cloud paradise fused into her
painting style and the acquisition of complete freedom.

◎ The Metaphysics of Kim Heejae’s Art Realm

If one examines the intelligence of the West and East, the West views all phenomena as objects of

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