김수자 전시회 '동심원' 3 (2023년 9월 13일)

김수자 씨의 전시회 '동심원 (Concentric Circles)'이

서울 종로구 윤보선길 갤러리 담에서 진행 중입니다.

어제 예고한 대로 오늘은 그 전시를 소개하는

영문 자료를 올립니다. 중간에 갑자기 글씨가 커진 건

이 블로그를 운영하는 포털사이트 '다음'의 소치입니다.

 

 

Press Release on Kim Soo-ja Solo Exhibition

Color Pencils Erasing Digital Stains

 

Amid the ever-increasing influence of social network services

(SNS), the world grows more shallow and noisy than any other

time. The digital craze encourages people to contaminate others 

and society in each of their own ways. The biggest culprits are

those who add noise to thw world by spreading farcical knowledge

and pseudo artists who degrade art itself through superficial attempts

at art. A 40-year-career illustrator, Kim Soo-ja responds with her 

trademark silence to the current trend, erasing the stains left

on contemporary times by the big mouths and fake

artists. Kim’s eraser happens to be the color pencil.

 

Color pencils came to be used in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.

during the Golden Age of Greece and today they are the tickets

by which children enter into the world of drawing. The colored pencils

and Kim Soo-ja share common characteristics: They both are simple

and transparent yet never lose each of their uniqueness. Using the

oldest and simplest means of drawing, Kim removes the stains of t

he digital era hyped to be the most advanced time in history.

 

Expediency and convenience have become zeitgeist of the times

but none of Kim’s works are created easily. Completed through

countless movements of the hands, her 25 works on show at her

“Concentric Circles” exhibition lead the viewers, individually and 

together, to the essence of life beyond the tangible world. Anyone

who breathes in and out deeply before her works is to discover his

or her own self that may have been lost for a long time.

 

Kim questioned the relations between civilization and humanity

through her “TV-People” exhibition in 1995. From the early 2000s,

she began to concentrate on translating poetry into paintings as if

to tell that she had found the answer to her 1995 question in poems.

She delivered what-may-be-called the remaining beauty of the world

through such exhibitions as “Illust Essay-Blue” in 2002, “Road to I

nsa-dong” in 2005, “Drawing Poetry” in 2008, “My Beautiful Garden”

in 2011 and “Walk around Seoul” in 2015, and the many books she

authored or illustrated.

 

This exhibition shows an achievement that is different from those

of her previous exhibitions, perhaps because it is held at the end,

hopefully, of the artist’s bout with an infamous cancer that forced

her to experience the most persistent pains she had ever faced in

her 60-odd life. “No pain, no gain,” the saying goes. If you fail to gain

something out of your pain, your pain would only mean waste.

For Kim, her pain seems to have served the artist in her well, for

her works present peace and healing effects to those with troubled

minds and bodies. This is why expectations for her next exhibition

are already running high.