• Large-scale retrospective exhibition to commemorate the achievements of Kim Chong Hak, the "painter of Mountain Seorak".
• Featuring 70 major paintings from his early works of the 1950s to more recent works.
• Establishing him as a major painter of our time who sequaciously worked on representational painting during the fever for abstract painting, depicting Korea's natural environment with glamorous colors and extravagant expression.
As its first exhibition of 2011, the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea is holding the Kim Chong Hak exhibition from March 29th to June 26th in the Gwacheon Main Building (Gallery 2). This large-scale retrospective exhibition will display the achievements of Kim Chong Hak, renowned as the "painter of Mountain Seorak', over a period of 50 years.
During the era after national liberation when contemporary art was introduced and established in Korea, Kim Chong Hak escaped the fever for abstract painting that raged among the art community, living in seclusion in Mt. Seorak, where he sequaciously worked on representational paintings for thirty years. For this retrospective exhibition, 70 of his major works were selected, including experimental works from the transition period, i.e., the late 1950s, and major works from the late 1970s, the beginning of the Mt. Seorak era, to the present.
Gauguin had Tahiti, Ansel Adams had Yosemite, and Kim Chong Hak had Seorak. His Mt. Seorak era began in 1979. He went to Mt. Seorak to search for a new topic rather than to return to nature. What he chose to focus on after abandoning his radical experimental approach and abstract logic were, surprisingly, flowers and grass, mountains and moon, and wind and water. The basic vitality of nature and the powerful energy of the artist clash with one another in his works. Even weak and feminine flowers on multicolored floral cushions are transformed into masculine scenery through Kim Chong Hak's thick brush strokes. The curator, Lee Ryoung who planned the exhibition, said he paid special attention to "the world of energy and life that the artist pursued, and the convivial world of masculine intrepidness." Meanwhile, Kim Chong Hak defines his works, which capture the powerful reality of nature with rapid and bold brush work with primary colors, as "new representational paintings with the basis in abstraction."
Kim Chong Hak's landscape paintings are not geographically limited to Mt. Seorak, but rather express Korea's mountains and nature in general. Subjects such as flowers, grass, birds, and butterflies are harmonized on canvas to sing enormous nature's song and to emit concentrated energy. The landscape paintings of Kim Chong Hak - who lives with nature and praises life - are odes to the 'spirit of the land' and the natural landscapes he walks upon with his two feet. The magnanimous energy and enormous basic vitality of nature will cure contemporary people who roam aimlessly around desolate grey cities. They will also confer the original power of the paintings on contemporary art, which has lost its direction due to an addiction to insignificant stimuli such as the shock of anything new.
This exhibition was planned to rediscover and reestablish Kim Chong Hak, who sequaciously provided a new direction for Korea's contemporary art at the opposite extreme of monochrome abstraction, as a major artist of our time. The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea plans to continue opening exhibitions on pioneering artists to help establish Korean contemporary art history.
Various programs will be available to viewers during the exhibition period. Exhibition briefing sessions with a docent will be held 2~3 times everyday (twice during the week, three times at the weekend), and a symposium <Kim Chong Hak?and His Friends> featuring the artist Kim Chong Hak and his old friends (Kim Bong Tae, Kim Hyeong Guk, Song Yong Bang, Youn Myeung Ro) will be held on April 15th (Friday) at 3pm (Gwacheon Main Building). In addition, the 'Curator Talk' will be held twice during the exhibition period in order to enhance the public's understanding of the exhibition, and Lee Tae Ho(Myongji University professor) will give a lecture on the artist with the focus on his use of color during the special lecture <Talking about Kim Chong Hak >.
