2022. 5. 9 – 5. 27
Ke-Won Lee , Eel-Kwon Kim, Keun-Ho Cho

Eel-Kwon Kim

Here I refer specifically to the paintings of the Korean artist Eel Kwon Kim.

To see these paintings, and to encapsulate their significance, is to go beyond the normative perception of how a landscape is seen or understand.

Kims landscapes have a direct reference to abstract painting. operate as a hinge between the two — representation and abstraction ― as a fulcrum, a balance beam, a way of seeing into the future. series, entitled Calm :Land, constitutes a kind of prophetic seismograph, a warning without deliberate calculation, a way of thinking and feeling in relation to the self.

understands that viewing the landscape is an intrinsic metaphysical action, a way of coming to terms with the reality of nature, with the infinity of the horizon line, with the calmness of the self, the solitude, the infinite grandeur of spiritual being in a world torn apart by fear and greed.

Kims paintings constitute a kind of seeing that envisions the future in relation to the past ― that sees the Eastern traditions of landscape painting as having a succinct calmness, a meaning without equivocation, a feeling of intrepid comprehension and contemplation.

Here one may discover a universe of human emotion and an atmosphere of galaxies that reign over our feeling as we move through time and space. (Eel kwon Kim: The New Landscape, essay by Robert C. Morgan, art critic may 2005 NY ARTS)

Ke-Won Lee

My recent works titled “the heritage of Paintings” are the homage to the legacy of painting that has lasted hundreds of years in history.

We have met various ways of creative methods of numerous painters in history that depict the world in ways that nourish and heal our souls by expanding our horizons of reason and emotion.

This heritage series of paintings presents a metaphor of the legacy of paintings with different layers of colors, each of which pushes and pulls each other on a canvas, floating and submerging. Those ‘peculiar’ layers of colors, full of vitality and fossilized at different times, come to us like presents given to us.

With these paintings, I would like to pay homage to the world of painting accumulated through history.

I reinforce the peculiar surface of my paintings with striking colors, layered with hard-edged, accumulated and overlapping forms. The reason I focus on ‘the surface’ is that I believe it is the key in restoring the reality of painting and creating a new dimension of painting. The vivid colors and simple geometric forms on the canvas remind us of the traces of ‘the surface’ in history and testify a birth of new idioms in paintings. (“The story of heritage of Painting” , Ke-won Lee)

Keun-Ho Cho

‘Mungchi’ is defined as a shape made by a group of small pieces or things being a mass and ‘Sansu’ means the landscape of mountains and rivers in Korean traditional paintings.

The ‘Mungchi Sansu’ is created by integrating my individual works into a mass in order to make a lumpy shape.

I reinterpreted urban and nature, daily life and imagery, visual world and the world of reason, which have been the subjects of my art, and integrated them into a mass.

I found that the feeling of mass, volume and lump of ‘Mungchi’ resembled the shape of Mt. Mudeung before my atelier and chose Mt. Mudeung as my first subject of ‘Mungchi Sansu’.
Seeing the Mudeung mountain through the window every day, I began to gather its energy and shapes in many ways and then extended my subjects to another routine.

‘Mungchi Sansu’ has the uniqueness of colors with lumpy shape recomposed. It also shows refined colors, simplified icons and noticeable color and face touching. I emphasize contrasting primary colors, coloring with delicate differences even in the same color category and harmony of primary colors and achromatic colors. In particular, the black color in ‘Mungchi Sansu’ color composition which focuses on the five cardinal colors plays an important role in making a lumpy feeling. I create colors by adjusting purity and painting over the drawing several times, so the arrangement of black color in color composition becomes a major factor in making a balance and harmony of the whole canvas.

I think that an art language learned by experience through repeated working process is important. ‘Mungchi Sansu’ is the product of simplifying nature and urban landscape, and exploring, analyzing and integrating their formative order and harmony between colors and faces. I hope my ‘Mungchi Sansu’ will be a window of communication connecting art and the world. ( Keun-Ho Cho, 2022 artist notes)

GALLERY SOHEON & SOHEON Contemporary
34, Bongsanmunhwa-gil, Jung-gu, Daegu, Korea
+82 53 426 0621

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