Conflict is a fundamental condition of existence. We simultaneously grapple with the world and live by its virtues. Light reveals its essence through shadows and darkness. The beauty of light eludes us when we are too close to the sun. Its greatness is felt more in the light that seeps into a cave than in the glaring light of a summer day. Everything exists in a conflicting relationship, yet within this intricate relationship that the wonder of true harmony is achieved. Such is the painterly world of KIM Young-Hun (b. 1964). The artist pours out an incredible painterly energy onto the canvas through the collision of contrasting colors, the construction and deconstruction of forms, vibration and rhythm, and the confrontation between converging images and diffusing energies. Every painting he creates erupts with mysterious vitality and power.

By colliding opposing colors on the canvas, the artist simultaneously builds and deconstructs forms. He erases, overlays, slices, and cuts a constructed form, giving rise to new, ambiguous, and blurred spaces before folding them yet again. By repeatedly executing these painting gestures countless times, he conceives an astonishing canvas. In reality, the phenomenal world we inhabit is an uninterrupted flow of enfolding and unfolding. The world of the artist's most abstract paintings bears a resemblance to the truths found in the physical realm. Furthermore, the contrast of vibrations and rhythms, converging images, and the boundless diffusion of energy produced by the artist guides us towards the forefront of a new realm of painting.

Excerpt from “The Unity of Passion for Innovation and Intellectual Speculation” | Lee Jin-myung (Art Critic & Doctor of Philosophy)

We live in constantly swaying waves. The lines of a Braun tube television, the grooves of a vinyl record, the sound of the wind and the waves, the adagio of a cello, the bending of space and time, the gaps between quarks, the swirl of galaxies, the universe as seen through the James Webb telescope, life in digital and virtual spaces....

My work, too, is evolving in tandem with the progress of 21st-century civilization. Certainly, novelty is conceived within the ruptures, much like a sprout growing from a crack in concrete.

If the color planes, fluorescent colors, and cut-up screen compositions that appear on the surface of my paintings are considered digital attributes, then the stripes of rainbow calligraphy (hyeokpil), splatters of paint, palette knife marks, geometric lines, and scratches can be seen as analog attributes. The continuity of the analog and the discontinuity of the digital, geometric waveforms alongside free waveforms, and a diverse array of disparate painting elements coexist or confront each other on the canvas, giving rise to pictorial imagination. My recent paintings thus represent my journey of excavating abstract imagination while navigating the gaps that exist between these pictorial elements.

Excerpt from “KIM Young-Hun Artist Statement—Fragments of Thought”