I. Prologue

Kim Young-hwan’s work focuses on the old traditional painting called tempera, but also embodies images filled with iconic or symbolic signs through genres encompassing prints and sculptures widely. Images are usually revealed and symbolized or materialized as “icons associated with humans” or “icons associated with nature”.

What is the symbolization and materialization of these icons? The icons he constructed correspond and contrast with each other on the screen, conveying the message of coexistence and symbiosis at the thematic level. Under themes such as ‘Peaceful Landscape’, ‘Peaceful Landscape-Encounter’, and ‘Harmonious House’, what is the specific message of coexistence and symbiosis regarding humans and nature that he presents? And what are the aesthetic implications that his work has?

Peaceful Landscape, Tempera on canvas, 130.5x97cm, 2024

II. Tempera Painting – The Elegance and Sublimity that Old Formative Embraces 

Kim Young-hwan inherited and modernistically transfigurated the old painting technique called tempera, which was used by Duccio di Buoninsegna and Cennino Cennini during the Renaissance period in the early 13th century. Tempera, a painting painted with paints made with egg yolk, honey, fig juice, etc. as a fixative, encompassed both water-based and oil-based, but after the spread of oil paints in the 15th century, the water-based painting method that mixed and used egg yolk and pigments have been mainly referred to as tempera. While tempera painting technique has the disadvantage that the colors before and after drying are different because the paint dries quickly, and that it is difficult to freely express changes in light and shade or tone, it has the advantage that the paint has the durability of not being easily deteriorated after drying.

Kim Young-hwan understands these disadvantages of tempera paintins as a creative process like ‘meditation that takes a long time’ and does not keep aloof the arduous and difficult labor. He first applies glue several times on hemp cloth or cotton cloth for a long period of time to create a sturdy painting base. On top of that, he slowly builds up the image by mixing purified alcohol, alum, egg yolk, and pigment. At this time, after the paint has completely dried, he finely grinds the surface of the painting with fine sandpaper and repeats the work of again painting and wiping off dozens of times until a mystical color comes out. It can be said that his work is truly a ‘time painting’ or ‘meditative painting’ in that he invests countless hours and labor to create a dense yet simple and plain effect.

Probably for that reason? His paintings also appear to be religious icons or symbols presented by tempera, an old formative technique. The simple yet refined formative language such as figures, houses, and landscapes painted on top of it with the background color in red, blue, or gold filled with a deep sense, which is made by building up in several layers on a solid support tramped with glue, embraces the ‘religious elegance and sublime aesthetics’ of icon painting, which is translated into ‘iconographic painting’ that we have encountered in Catholic art. As I. Kant and E. Burke have pointed out, the sublime contains a religious experience or a transcendent aesthetic of nature that evokes overwhelming fear and awe.
On the other hand, Kim Jong-hwan’s paintings aim to convey a message of the sublime revealing the transcendence of God and nature through simple yet symbolic icons rather than the sublime attracted by overwhelming horror and awe. In other words, his paintings have similar characteristics to those of mid-Byzantine art of the 8th to 9th centuries, which was dominated by the iconoclasm movement, rather than the early Christian art of the 1st to 4th centuries, which focused on expressing sacred images such as Christ, the Virgin Mary, and saints. This is because in this period, when sacred images were considered idols, nature such as geometrically iconic holy trees and symbolic icons of transcendence such as simple shaped holy objects, dominated instead of shapes of God.
Just as the Greek root word for today’s icon, Eikon, was originally a term referring to both “material, external” imitation and “immaterial, internal” imitation, Kim Young-hwan’s icon paintings, that are iconographic paintings that maintain the status of sacred art, convey the message of “theophany” that seeks to “make visible” the “external/internal identity” of the “invisible God.” By combining simple and symbolic icons that inherit the tempera tradition in a modern way with mystical colors, he calmly conveys a message that visualizes an immaterial spiritual world that encompasses and transcends reality. Indeed, it can be said to be a work of art that conveys ‘the elegance and sublimity that old formatives embrace.’

Peaceful Landscape, Tempera on canvas, 53×45.5cm, 2024

III. New Iconology of coexistence and symbiosis
Let’s look at how Kim Young-hwan’s tempera paintings specifically explore and convey the aesthetics of the sublime along with the message of coexistence.
In Kim Young-hwan’s paintings, symbolic icons such as holy water and holy objects are largely transformed into two categories: ‘icons related to humans (hands, men, women, curtains, houses, bowls, ships, ladders, etc.)’ and ‘icons related to nature (light, the sun, the moon, clouds, rivers, mountains, trees, birds)’ and are iconified or symbolized as new types of sacred paintings or sacred art. Here, humans and nature are not limited to Christian thinking, but convey the message of ‘God-inherent nature and humans’ that B. Spinoza’s philosophy conveys. In other words, it is the same as pantheism, which says that ‘God is not the transcendent cause of all things, but a kind of inherent cause, and is a being close to nature.’ Also, in Kim Young-hwan’s works, as in the thinking of Spinoza, who argued that “God is the source of all existence and that everything is an expression of God,” icons associated to humans or nature are always linked to God.
Let’s look at his work. The large hand (手) that frequently appears in his works conveys an implicit message of religious iconographic paintings, as in the title ‘Bird’s Hand (Vogel Hand)’. In other words, this icon is a metaphor for a divine being that contains messages such as ‘transcendence, supernatural power, divine authority, the Holy Spirit, and blessing’ in the history of Western Christian art. Like the shape of large hands coming down like light through the sky or scarred hands that are growing and holding up a tree, or the shape of large hands that are pulling a stranded boat, these icons convey messages of grace and blessing from a supernatural being like a god. How about a piece that embodies large hands supporting the ground, which appears to be a real world with trees and buildings standing upright? This also clearly shows the close ‘nature-inherent divine view’ of God, nature, and humans.
In this dimension, the hand that appears in his work is not limited to the interpretation of the shape of the hand of the absolute being, but can also be read as an icon symbolizing a supernatural power that attempts a spiritual connection between ‘God, nature, and mans.’ Or it can be read as a sublime portrait of a mediator connecting this world and nirvana. Thus, in Kim Young-hwan’s work, the sublime is manifested while connecting God, nature, and humans and sharing the message of coexistence and symbiosis.

Peaceful Landscape, Tempera on canvas, 70x80cm, 2024

Let’s look at another work. The scenery created together by a house with clouds on its head and tall green trees, or the scenery created by the light leaking out from inside a building (house or temple) with a long door, is Peaceful and mysterious. The Peaceful and strange appearance of the lush, leafy trees standing together with the human figures or the curtains hanging over the bare trees contrasting with each other is linked to the ambiguous scenery of dawn or dusk when it is difficult to tell whether it is the faintly shining moon or the sun. These ambiguous images, created by connecting icons to other icons, in turn create a rich, multi-meaningful meaning for us, effectively conveying the message of coexistence and symbiosis of what and what.
In his work, the encounter between icons and other icons does not remain in the category of nature and humans, but attempts to establish various relationships in a way of continuously connecting what to what between God, nature, and humans. His works, in which icons such as men, women, houses, ships, ladders, the sun, the moon, clouds, rivers, and trees are rearranged in various ways in each work and encounter each other repeatedly, convey to us the meaning of correspondence and harmony achieved when all beings meet, as well as diverse coexistence and symbiosis.

IV. Epilogue
As is well known, E. Panofsky expressed the iconology while analyzing the icons and symbols found in Renaissance art in the 『Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance』 published in 1939. Today, iconology has become an old discipline in that it practices art interpretation as a critical theory that combines aesthetic critical mind with analysis of the sociocultural context beyond the image, but it still has some points that are valid in our time. This is true in terms of trying to understand the work while tracing the meaning of the text hidden in the image created by the artist, that is, the creator’s intention.
In this dimension, Kim Young-hwan’s work, which creates modern icons through the method of establishing a minimal image-text relationship, asks us to interpret it in a new way. The idea is to regard his textual message hidden in the image as a message of invitation to decipher it together from the perspective of today’s reception theory or reception aesthetics, and to let our imagination run wild within the author’s work and jump into the horizon of interpretation. The key will be to trace the message of coexistence and symbiosis hidden in the encounters between the icons he created. In this dimension, his tempera paintings, which contain the elegance and sublimity that the old formatives embraced, can be evaluated as a ‘new iconology’ that melts down the message of coexistence and coexistence in a Peaceful, silent landscape and conveys it from heart to heart. (20241206)