The solo exhibition of Kim Ji Won, who is known for his Mendrami paintings, will be held at Johyun Gallery, Busan. Kim, who holds an important stature in Korean contemporary art, has been studying the fundamentals of painting in terms of “drawing,” contemplating on everyday lives and exploring relationships with society. Whether he’s facing objects or abstractions, the artist devotes himself in working solely using the touches of his internal energy. In the exhibition, large canvas works and fifty small works, representative of the artist’s style, are showcased. The installation of fifty small works, attempted for the first time, draws a horizon, embroidering the walls of the exhibition space like a horizon over water surrounding the sea. 

Through his own discreet observations, the artist portrays, in a painterly manner, Mendrami flowers he planted himself in the front yard of his studio. A numerous number of works, including roughly three meters high and two meters wide canvases, populates the exhibition space, forming a Mendrami garden colored with green, red and white paints. Mendrami flowers bloom profusely in summer and emit colors fervidly until their last bits perish. These sensuous flowers are depicted by the artist in high color contrasts using bold and raw brush strokes, amplifying the intensity of the flowers.

Also called “cockscombs,” Mendrami flowers are known for their strong proliferation and vitality and are associated with the meaning of “passion.”Within the course of formation, maturation and destruction of the flowers, the artist reveals the entangled human world that is secular and absurd, involving life and death, solitude and desire, and the emotions of happiness, anger, sadness, and joy. Dizziness, the sensation one can experience while walking through a meadow covered with endless grass and wild flowers bolting under the sun in hot summer, is conveyed to the viewers as the whirling sensation vibrates from the images of Mendrami flowers through intoxicating light and tactile strokes. This is the pinnacle of contemporary painting, readily revealing the act of abstraction.

Today, art is expressed, with diversity and complexity, beyond canvases through video and new media. Despite these shifts prevailing in the mainstream, the artist focuses on painterly “drawing.”Kim Ji Won, the artist, who observes through his eyes and carefully and meticulously portrays objects that others may pass by in indifference in their everyday lives, doesn’t simply recreate his subjects on canvases but rather expresses them through ceaseless process of inner reflection.

*image (left)
courtesy of the artist and Johyun Gallery