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Artist Kim Soon-gyeom

Born in 1959

Exhibition experience

Solo exhibitions: 18

Group exhibitions
Southern Contemporary Art Festival (‘87), Gwangju Contemporary Art Festival (‘87), Busan Youth Biennale (‘86), Jeju Free Art Festival (‘87~), Seoul Contemporary Art Festival (‘92), Human and History Exhibition (‘92)
Method for Consciousness Exhibition (‘92), Italian Contemporary Art Invitational Exhibition, Korean/Australian Contemporary Artist Invitational Exhibition, Namsong International Art Show (‘10), Rochester City Invitational Exhibition, India International Exchange Exhibition
New York BLOOMING Invitational Exhibition, Hallasan and Sunrise Peak Exhibition (Jeju Museum of Art 3rd Anniversary Invitational Exhibition), JEJU PAINTS ASIA (‘22), BAMA Art Fair (‘22), Art Festa JEJU (‘24),
Siheung Art Festival (‘24), Jeju Art Festival (‘22), Gyeonggi Art Award Winner Invitational Exhibition (‘24), etc.

Participated in numerous international and group exhibitions

presently

Advisor of the Siheung Art Association of the Korean Fine Arts Association
Group Ter, Halla Art Association
Jeju Provincial Art Museum Management Committee
Active as a full-time artist

Judging experience

Judge for the Republic of Korea Art Exhibition, Judge for the Gyeonggi-do Art Exhibition (‘14)
Residency Program Artist Deliberation Committee for the “Art Space Ia” (‘19)
Jeju Youth Artist Exhibition Artist Selection Deliberation Committee (‘20) and many others

Book

Appreciation and Understanding of Art (Hakmunsa, co-authored)
Oriental Art History for Youth (Duri Media, co-authored)

Awards

Siheung City Art Achievement Award (‘04) Gyeonggi Province Citizen Award (Arts Category ‘13)

Collection of works

National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Jeju Provincial Museum of Art, Kidang Art Museum, etc.

The world of works

The most Korean thing can be the most global thing.

Based on the idea that “the most Korean things can be the most global,” he has been consistently working since the 1980s, and his works are composed around the theme of “longing beyond memory.”
What memory and longing pursue is interest in the world of the past, present, and future.

In other words, it is a world where the author's own memories, experiences, and dreams for the future reside. As can be seen in the work, the author starts from a love for things around him that are forgotten or neglected, and although the selected objects are depicted realistically, the intention of expression goes beyond the reproduction of the objects and focuses on revealing the lyricism of intentionally staged memories.

The trend in his works in the 90s was to use windows as a symbol of communication between the past, present, and future by featuring traditional windows and the outside scenery seen through them as background images. However, in his later works, he dismantled the windows and treated them abstractly, thereby further strengthening the implicit and symbolic atmosphere.

In his works since 2010, he expresses the tendencies of realism, abstractionism, and surrealism in a single work, and his main materials are Bangjja Yugi, water, and rapeseed flowers.

Bangjja Yugi is a relic that has been passed down since the early Bronze Age, containing the soul and life of our people. It is said to symbolize wealth and is a mystical vessel that is harmless to the human body and does not change its properties. In the work, water symbolizes life, and rapeseed flowers symbolize abundance and happiness. And the background emphasizes the beauty of blank space to express a Korean and modern feel.

In particular, in his recent works, he has given a thick three-dimensional feel to brass bowl (bangjja yugi) and rapeseed flower shapes, further maximizing the sense of reality and depth, and has incorporated abundance and happiness into his works based on Korean sentiments.

From Kim Soon-gyeom's writer's note

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subject matter

The main subjects of recent works are brassware (bronzeware) and rapeseed flowers.
Brassware, especially brassware, is a relic that contains the soul and life of our people that has been passed down since the early Bronze Age. It is non-toxic and harmless to the human body, symbolizing nobility and wealth, and is known as a mystical vessel that does not change its properties.

Critics

Artist Kim Soon-gyeom is an artist with a solid conceptual ability who continues to make efforts to communicate with the audience through his work while incorporating historical and social meanings, which is why he is receiving sympathy from people. In the Korean art world, artist Kim Soon-kyum is highly regarded for this aspect and is always paying attention to the process of change.

During the interview

As I began to take an interest in localism during my college years, I realized that a Korean identity was important to becoming a world-class writer.

The process of creating my work goes through many stages before it is completed. Since I cannot simply apply paint and add layers to fully express the world of my work, I use various expressive techniques (finger painting, using various objects, etc.) to create my work. Expressing brass bowl(bangjjayugi) also involves modeling the shape, creating the shape with paint additives, and drawing it.

The water droplets that appear in my work symbolize life and abundance. That is why I express them more realistically.

Recent works mainly express the base color in five colors, which is based on our traditional colors of the five cardinal colors (white, yellow, red, black, blue). This is because the direction of the artist’s work has changed with the times, and it is also because he emphasizes the modernity of the traditional material of Bangjja Yugi with the strong and gorgeous single color.

The main concept of my work is “Longing Beyond Memory”, and the meaning of the word “longing” here is longing for the past and the unknown world of the future, and ultimately it talks about the communication of time between the past, present, and future. Therefore, the reason I put in Shin Yun-bok’s Portrait of a Beauty and Van Gogh’s Portrait in the background is to talk about the communication of time through collaboration between the past images and the world of my current work, “Longing Beyond Memory – YOUCHAE FLOWER”.

I think it’s because I have a naturally lyrical personality and because I left my hometown when I was young and ended up obsessed with longing.

It can be said that it was based on the interest in localism in the past, and Hallasan Mountain and rape flowers naturally appeared as the subjects of the work as the most symbolic and positive message of Jeju. In the work with Hallasan Mountain, the expression of the water from Baekrokdam overflowing and flowing down the valley and changing into the shape of rape flowers below can be seen as containing the artist’s intention to wish for Jeju’s infinite abundance.

The characteristic of the expression of rape blossoms is the abstractness utilizing strong matière and pointillism. Rape blossoms are characterized by thick matière dots that are applied countless times, and when dots of various colors are repeatedly used on the background, they are ultimately completed with the feeling of yellow rape blossoms.

This work was painted using a brush made from bamboo rather than a conventional brush.