Art Seasons Gallery is pleased to announce ‘Erehwon: New Paintings and Sculptures by Yim Tae Kyu’. Yim’s works are recognized for their playful reinterpretation of traditional ink painting and for the bitterly amusing scenes of metropolitan banality.
The unusual title, ‘Erehwon’, resonates with the name of satirical utopia in Samuel Butler’s novel, Erewhon (1872), and is an anagram of the word “nowhere”. Butler uses his utopia as a device to question the Victorian virtues and its religious hypocrisies. Yim’s imagined world extends that view to our times, and he focuses his commentary on the marginal beings of our society. However, as much as Butler’s utopia was not a complete dystopia, Yim’s ‘Erehwon’ also harbors unrestricted curiosity and imagination.
In order to achieve the sketch-like lines in his painting, Yim soaks a traditional Korean paper with an oriental ink, overlaps it with another paper before the ink dries, and draws on top of it with a pencil or a sharp object. Like the expressive quality of traditional brushstrokes, the transferred lines are speedy, focused and intricate. As a result of the artist’s continuous experiment, his unique method delivers a distinct approach that blur the boundaries between tradition and modern.
While working with a conventional genre, Yim intuitively portrays the populous urban landscape and alienated state of individual in mass society. The mixture of vivid primary colours, nauseating speed and swarm of restless miniature figures parallel the disconcerting complexity of a metropolis. Everything is set in motion and constantly between actions. This overcrowding gives rise to a sensation of speed, instability, derange and estrangement. Also, breaking sharply from its haze, the ashen skin-tone reflects its traditional paper medium, and contrasts with the colourful clothing and the cityscape. As a result, it further accentuates the rupture between the figures and their environment.
Moreover, suggesting his training in ink painting, his space is usually indefinite and unknown. Besides and beyond the meditative quality of the unknown, however, his nameless metropolis – or utopia – generates a sense of childhood curiosity and adventure. The sketchy, cartoon-like figures recapture the peripheral lives with crude naivety, and the vitality seeps out from the ceaseless lines, accidental ink blotches, and variegated colors. Yim has an ability to portray the landscape of mundane periphery, all the while, dissolving the banal routine into ingenuous imagination.
Yim Tae Kyu (b. 1976) was born in Seoul, Korea and graduated his M.A. in Chong Ang University Fine Arts Department. He was awarded prestigious art prizes including the Song Eun Art Award (2005) and the Seok Nam Arts Award (2007). He currently lives and works in Seoul and Beijing.
Opening Reception: Saturday, 15 January, 2011, 3-6pm
The artist will be present at the Opening Reception
