Stroking-down
From where a fine line extended grows another line. I draw lines that are so fine and delicate, remaining almost unchanged in thickness and shading. The technique is close to the “Tiexianmiao” that is used to outline figures in Oriental painting, and the shape to the “wavy lines” that is one of the traditional geometric patterns. These lines are arranged in layers and weaved into the images of scales, fur, hairs, skins, and so on. Hairs gather to form the shape of a plant and then soon create that of a petal, while waves get higher, only to become scales. I repeatedly ‘stroke down’ surface of the canvas with a thin brush or a pen, than draw fine lines to represent something. It is near to a tactile action. I do not plan out the composition of the painting from the beginning, but depend on the tension of the moment when I am drawing a line.

The Unfamiliar but Common Tradition
There are times when my eyes fall on the traditional patterns decorating the outer wall of an apartment building or a fence. At other times, I feel strange at the sight of the ancient buildings that stand in odd contrast to the surroundings, such as Dongdaemun under repair and Gwanghwamun where traditional events are often staged. Decorations or buildings with traditional motifs are for the most part nothing but images that you unconsciously pass by. The traditional images are always around us, ‘decorating’ the city as if by habit or naturally, irrespective of the question of why and how. However, at one moment, I am struck dumb as if I just open up my eyes that have been closed so long. And this astonishment at the range of modifications, the coarseness, and the carelessness of the traditional signs gradually gives way to the questions like “where do they come from?” and “why are they there?” It was this ‘status of something being dislocated’ found in everyday life that brought me to a new understanding of the tradition. The world of traditional paintings, or the painting of the past world, is in itself unfamiliar and strange. But I would like to look at the present through the eyes of those who lived in the past, rather than express the unfamiliarity of the tradition through the eyes of modern man. The truth is that the world is sufficiently strange at some points. I want to go into the world created by the ‘traditional arts,’ without neither hesitation nor the sense of balance, and then reverse the tense and gaze as if looking at the present there.

The Surface of the World
For me, Paramita, or the land of Nirvana, is neither a utopia nor an actual location. The place is like a certain surface, skin, scale, shell, and pattern. There is another world on the surface which anything cannot penetrate but just slip down. Here, a new order is created from even the mixture of apples and oranges. A bunch of lines produce a beautiful ‘gyeol’1), and a combination of floating images give rise to a new meaning. The status that belongs nowhere is linked to the infinite possibility that belongs everywhere. Therefore, the ‘gyeol’ is splendid.
- Jipyeong Kim

*’Gyeol’ is a Korean word which means the appearance or pattern of a piece of fabric woven with smaller particles and layers. It is usually used in relation with the way that the surface of the skin, hairs, scales or shells looks or feels, describing both the visual and tactile sensations of it.

Courtesy of Gana Art