Mizuma Gallery is pleased to announce Transitions, a solo exhibition by Korean artist, Kim Tae-Ho.
Kim Tae-Ho, one of the leading artists of Korean monochrome art since the 1970s, is highly celebrated for having expanded the possibilities of his art form within the East Asian contemporary practice. His bold experimentation across media, sometimes incorporating traditional handmade hanji paper within his heavily textured, monochromatic works, has strongly allied his practice with the legacy of his contemporary Dansaekhwa painters. Kim Tae-Ho’s paintings retain the unique characteristic of their vivid palette: a product of the artist’s meticulous working method to accrue a dense sediment of colour within the picture plane itself.
The exhibition will see the progression of Kim’s career with his the first of his series Form, up till his most recent, Internal Rhythm. Dating back to 1977 when Form was first presented, the paintings attempted to express an abstract figurative subject buried within geometric and illusionary forms. With hanji paper later incorporated, Form took inspiration from building shutters that stand strong as a symbol for resistance; Kim sought to express this significance of miscommunication and isolation of people in contemporary times. Moving forward into the 1990s, Internal Rhythm was birthed, shifting his portrayal of expressions from form to space structure.
From 1995 onward, Internal Rhythm sees Kim through a painfully laborious and meticulous art-making process. Guided by interwoven lines drawn in a fixed rhythm on the canvas, heavy brushstrokes are layered over twenty times to produce a bulky mass of paint layers. He proceeds to then scrape away the dense accumulation of paint, to reveal the colours beneath each layer. Countless visual spaces are constructed within the overlapping grid formation: each cell like a beehive, producing its own life in the realm of the painting. Art critic Kim Bok-young has referred to Kim’s method of working as a ‘coexistence of concealing and revealing’. He does not reveal all at once but prefers to show only a small part of himself: a small moment of conflict within the internal rhythm of the artist.
Transitions will be Kim Tae-Ho’s first solo exhibition in Singapore following his four-decade-long career.
22 Lock Road #01-34 Gillman Barracks Singapore 108939
