Critic's Note: Kim Myung-Sook’s works mark a departure from the realist method, while they also represent a breakaway from the contemporary art in which art becomes an object. The more appropriate definition of Kim Myung-sook’s work would be a new type of figurative painting emerged after abstract expressionism.
While realist paintings project the exterior outlook of objects through human senses, Kim Myung-sook’s works express the very inconsistency of the artist’s reasoning and emotions. Such uniqueness constitutes her work to be different. Images expressed in Kim Myung-sook’s work are the traces of speculations and exchanges that humans as isolated beings share with nature and the universe. Furthermore, they are representations of our inner landscape. Created upon basic human emotions, they open up the possibility of communication for us to break away from isolation. By drawing closer to the essence of the world through the experience of the world where the relations are reversed, the artist aims to reach the origin of personal ego. It is revealed in the artist’s remark, “One day in the dawn, the tress were looking at me. They were no longer objects of my gaze, but became subjects that speculate about me, and were gazing at me.”
Such occasion of unity happens not only between the artist and the objects of her gaze, but also between the artist and medium, medium and audience. Within such relationships, there are silent struggles to restore contemporary art, which is reduced to ‘objects,’ back to the objectification of human being.
Artist's Education: Ewha Woman's University, Seoul, Korea. B.F.A., Painting.
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