Trauma The belief that figural paintings contain human mind is still remain unchanged. Only the mind is changing by the reality and diverse experiences of each creator. It can be either joy of moment or a wound which can never be healed. It is foolish to expect that the creators are the only ones who should live slow enduring all agonies and heavy burdens in this wide variety of reality. Moreover, they are indeed suffering from stream of time like the others. The illness of South Korean painting suddenly came across mind when staring at Ki-pyung Kong's I Like Pizza (2009), created after when the artist became fifty years old. Since the nature of the fatigue is inveterate, it is likely to come in soggy weather, dusky evening or middle of dark night, but also induces pain on a sunny relaxed day when trying to enjoy a free rest. People only leave themselves to their busy life, ignoring the accustomed pain as we become older.
Prescription Can time actually heal everything? People usually call time remedy but it is difficult to measure the importance of it. One may think of time as a glass of wine, but the other may deprive of it for his whole life. Yet, even though it can merely be a temporary prescription, not an absolute cure, it would obviously be great if we could forget about the existence of time for just one moment. Indeed, we sometimes become obsessive for that short but sweet comfort. It is only our aging body which needs to be concerned. Previous works by Kong had been filled with memories of wounds, whether they belong to an individual or history and ideology. It is why his paintings were pathetically dark or thick like a roman-fleuve. Kong may have attempted to confront the irrational barbarism of the modern society. The savageness, harmonized with romanticism or desires, created humans and beasts floating around in zero gravity in his paintings.
Splendidness Since his recent work FunnyFunny (2009), before the paintings of pizza (2009) were created, his paintings became greatly bright and splendid. One possibility is that Kong may have found the motivation of moving from long darkness to splendidness in Mt. Jiri (2004~): FunnyFunny (2009) is a joyous painting that describes delicate wild flowers gently blooming on Mt. Jiri with dazzling colors. An experiment of combining brilliant colors and form of relief in sculpture was added in FunnyFunny (2009). Furthermore, diagrammatic story telling format like cartoon or hanging pictures of 1980s and appearance of disordered letters can be found in I Like Pizza (2009).
Breathe If content is emphasized in figural paintings, the atmosphere of sublimity would be formed so that the painting may become somewhat strict and boring. In contrary, if format overflows, it becomes frivolous and empty. Rough breathes could be read in Kong's past works which are filled with diverse of experiments. Nevertheless he is still an artist, and there are indeed some serious stories of his first exhibition (1995) in the talkative pizzas (2009). Yet, what strikes us more harshly is that we need to find some ways to live happily in this sticky reality like the chunk of fat slipping down from the little imperialistic mung-bean pancake. What more can we do? This is our country South Korea where even the president has committed suicide…
By Geum-soo Choi ( Director of www.neolook.com & Imageology)
