2022 Curatorial Statement -
With a Composed Gaze
It has become my daily routine to stare out the window along with my
two-year-old son, who loves watching the cars passing out on the road. It has
been a long time since I looked at the same scene every day from the same
perspective. At the beginning, I focused on the colors, shapes, and movement of
the cars that cause my son to shout for joy. After a while, though, I happened
to look at some pigeons flapping their wings in the near distance, and then
began to watch the trees standing as still as ever in the same place like a
backdrop.
Living in a climate with four distinct
seasons, we can note the passage of time by experiencing the changing weather.
The green of trees and plants in particular can be considered a dramatic
representation of seasonal changes. Bare branches that have been muted all
throughout the winter become thick with leaves in various shades of green,
vivid with flower petals in multifarious colors, and laden with fruits that attract
insects and birds. Changes in nature are happening around us on a regular
basis, but most people feel overwhelmed by their busy lives and rarely take a
moment to observe the process of these changes with a composed mind.
Here, we are looking at the scenes of
trees, woods, and gardens depicted in Lim Hyunkyung’s compositions. We can
hardly ever rest our eyes in our current world bombarded with artificially
produced visual materials including images, artworks, and videos. However, the
verdancy produced by and in nature can allow us a refreshing and cheerful break.
While gazing at the green leaves so densely depicted in Lim’s large paintings
on silk, we may clearly sense the gentle breezes rustling through the woods
along with the low warble birds and the refreshing smell of grass. The artist
invests time in observing the ordinary scenery that each of us faces every day.
What she finds beautiful in such scenes is diligently reproduced in her work.
Her detailed and elaborate manner of depiction suggests the time demanded by
her intensive labor, which makes her seem like an ascetic pursuing religious
virtue.
When I am indulging in delightful fantasies
of repose and recovery, my thoughts turn to the invisible effort needed to take
care of those trees. In the urban environment built by humans, it is we people
who should be charged with the ongoing maintenance of trees: giving them water in times of drought,
spraying to prevent harmful insects, applying fertilizer through stem injection
to treat their ill-health, and pruning in the wintertime to reduce sap oozing
out of the cuts soothe the stress from the cutting. Thinking of all this hard
work needed to keep trees alive, we come back to the truth that nothing is
natural. We once again encounter and acknowledge the self-evident fact that
tremendous energy and care are essential for the creation and growth of life.
In other words, no one is able to survive solely by oneself. That is probably
why the trees in Lim’s compositions seem to represent humans, figures who are
standing alone but should be with others.
In Lim’s compositions, the background is
left unpainted. This is an important factor that causes each of the trees to
seem to represent an individual. We have seen any number of paintings that
depict trees in the background. Furthermore, trees in landscapes are often
arranged with other elements that indicate the location of the place being
depicted. However, in Lim’s paintings the trees are standing against a simple
white background. Shelter of the forest (2022) is a horizontal
silk scroll painting that depicts a number of trees from different species set
in a row at regular intervals. Each tree represents not only a unique species,
but also a different phase in the seasonal cycle. By staging the trees in a
panoramic scene, the artist suggests the finitude of every living thing on this
planet and the life cycle of birth, growth, aging, and death. The trees, each
with their unique color and shape, also refer to people with their own
individual personalities.
The large cloth appearing to be a shroud or
sometimes a curtain is one of the key elements that repeatedly appear in the Shelter
of the forest series. Covering a group of trees, it seems to be
protecting them from outside threats or disturbances while at the same time
drawing them together into a community. The shroud functions as a canopy
binding these trees proudly towering over the world, but also creates a space
that separates and demarcates the inside from the outside. A sense of belonging
partners with exclusion like two sides of the same coin. Living within a
society, individuals come to belong to certain groups over the course of their
lives and live and grow together with the people around them. Each individual
chooses to be connected and to form or join circles as a survival strategy,
eventually establishing a new family with another individual and increasing the
number of its members.
The ink wash and colors that Lim applied to
the silk create a subtle ambiance in the pieces presented in this exhibition.
Unlike her previous paintings in which the intense energy of the ink wash
dramatically stands out, here she renders a tranquil, toned-down atmosphere by
using ink wash in balance with other colors. It is noteworthy that her
technique of applying color on both the front and the reverse of the silk
creates a unique texture on the surface as the colors permeate the fabric. A
Forest After a Forest (2022), a series produced during a sojourn
overseas, displays exotic features such as a wall-like structure of densely
aligned trees with thick leaves without masonry or an arched gate and birds
with blue or red feathers among the trees. In such a composition combining
traditional materials from East Asian painting and subject matter and modes of
expression inspired by Western culture, distinct characteristics from the East
and the West seem to unite smoothly in a natural manner. This might be a mode
that derives from her own life, or perhaps from contemporary society itself
that features a mixture of countless kinds of information and a transient
lifestyle.
Choi Jeong-yoon (Independent Curator)
Translation/
Moon Yujin