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Night Stairs
Kim, Seong Ryong2002
Korean Art Museum Association
Seoul, South Korea
Going up seemingly endless stairs
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Details
- Title: Night Stairs
- Creator: Kim, Seong Ryong
- Creator Lifespan: 1970
- Creator Nationality: Korean
- Creator Birth Place: Busan, Korea
- Date Created: 2002
- Physical Dimensions: w950 x h1250 cm
- Type: Painting
- Medium: Permanent ball-point pen, acrylic paint, Chinese ink on paper
- Critic's Note 2: Seong Ryong Kim’s unique work has a very rare quality when considering our current art scene. Although there are huge influences from the mass media focused on commercial values, his work shows that the artistic spirit can be preserved like the legend of a deep mountain. Good will, longevity and the progressivity of humanity are examples Kim’s genuine work reflects. However, under current circumstances, everyday life seems to be full of humiliation for him. It is possible his artistic sensitivity could be hurt and wounded. The main motif of his work comes from the will to restore individual’s life and longing for auspicious energy through sympathizing the scars and mythicizing lost times. It is possible that Kim could be one of the few artists that will keep his monumental artistic sprit.
- Critic's Note 1: Seong Ryong Kim’s painting suddenly appears like tearing off the curtain of reality and showing its brutal teeth within. That’s the moment existence fearlessly reveals its violent nature. Direct eye contact lights a fuse in our emotions, which is transferred into electric energy. The viewers’ muscles tense and the number of nerve cells increases. As the viewer continues to focus on Kim’s painting, various lines wriggle and dance. The sharp lines of the permanent ball-point pen creates movement that appear like speeding cars, tornados or erratic waves. Although there is no dot in his painting, the smallest circle that resembles a dot, became a symbol of the end. In Kabbalah, “God emerges from dot.” (The symbol of God in the Kabbalah is a circle with a dot in the center.) When God is absent, nature diabolically takes over the world. There is something that shakes inside the viewer, like recalling a bothering moment we have experienced before. I applaud his effort to search for a place beyond rationality and conventional art history.
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