Azaleas to All Mothers

Artist Kim glorifies the flower as Korean image, original emotion

The aspect that painter Kim Jung-soo shows us is a simple and precise feeling. What entered the eyes of those who saw his art work for the first time were the petals of azaleas which seems to be scattered in the center of the painting or thrown and float on the air. Next, what we could see was a lot of objects being dimly held down slanting toward the bottom side of the painting.
There sometimes are painting of street trees and a corner landscape of a few houses gathered together in the country. In the same way, there are also the paintings of the landscape of a peculiar city downtown area and buildings which stand hiding the sun are shown. Some paintings are somewhat different, which paintings were drawn of the petals of azaleas lain on the stones playing roles of stepping stones.
The painter is reaching the vein of such an original form which he shows as azaleas. The artist is looking for the motive related to the azaleas in his childhood.
When he was a child, his mother would often take her son to the nearby mountain with so many azaleas. The painter vaguely recalled his childhood memory after returning home from an extended stay in Paris. He was looking for the most regional and yet universal value for his art theme and azaleas came to his mind immediately. To the artist, azaleas is a symbol of utmost Korean image as well as a kind of amusing thing to remind him of his mother. In other words, it means not only Korean original form of emotion over the artist's childhood, but also Korean people's identity.
Azaleas seem abstract in his paintings, not realistic, in spite of having been drawn to be touched due to being far away from the veins which it originally belongs to. When things are alone separated from the relationship network, the situation will be abstractive. Even though things itself did not change, human recognizing ability could take it as an abstractive one. If so, are Kim's art work abstract ones created from a combination of impact of paintings self discipline and inner logic's Not so, rather as the azaleas in the paintings are united with other factors such as the horizontal line or stream water and shabby shacks and they become part of another vein to aim at other meanings not shown on the surface, that have more essential and deeper meaning.
The azaleas drawn alone, azaleas being scattered on the horizon like butterflies and azaleas being set on stepping stones in the streams show themselves and more ultimate meaning of inner emotion or image of original form conspicuously. Accordingly, the artist does not only regard azaleas as simple showing objects and does not also think of them as abstractive objects. Instead, they are used as the emotional signs rather than suggestive and symbolic signs and logic.
The symbolic meaning as in other paintings appear obviously as the painting of azaleas drawn on shanties is in connection with social and epochal logic. While the shanties drawn in grey tone speaks for the lives in the dark era, the meaning comes to be more clear compared with the splendid color of azaleas. Not only do the azaleas, all the flowers cannot prove to show the way of living poor and fleeting, can they's In Kim's art pieces, the azaleas would rather remain not only a subject matter but also look into a living through a prism of azaleas.
Along this line in the paintings the groups of azaleas drawn simply on the stepping stones the empty canvas reflects the image of stone to be the stream. The artist took notice of the nature of water like a mirror and takes the way to suggest the stream without drawing any stream in it. It is difficult to do it without the course of mediation for a long time having insight into the core of situation. On the canvas drawn in the least the quite riverside from which water mist is rising up at dawn seems to be seen, the clear color of azaleas on it being compared with it against this.
However, azaleas themselves set on the stepping stone may be an accidental situation he caught from nature, but it seems an intended situation wearing a disguise. As if he was connected with the different objects or situations of stepping stones and azaleas with each other. This may regard the case as realizing 'the value of thing'of surrealism produced situation not to be able to be through adjoining heterogeneous things but in the case of artist he is attractive to the similarity rather than emotional heterogeneity. The stream is as if it were a subject matter to arouse the artist's childhood together with azaleas, and itself is another form of emotional original form and leading indicator connected with Korean image or esthetic susceptibility. Thus as he adjoined the factors of different emotion with each other, he would try to make double the arousing power about the original form. In fact, stepping stones drawn behind the scene is making us feel like disappearing in the far away scene across the river, which suggests the imperfect recreating power of memory to recover a part of forgotten emotion.
Poet Kim So-wol's poems are memorized in almost all the people's memory, so the memory of the azaleas in painter Kim's memory, which seems especially strong. Artist Kim said he has many memories on the flower. They are such things as mother, flower stews, wine, features, and affairs of lives here and there in the land he has been to. He spent a long time in France and covert discrimination felt there, which are reflections entangled with azaleas. Even though the peculiar experience cannot always let us draw peculiarly good paintings, artist Kim tries to approach us with the subject of the azaleas.
If so, his art work is the story of cultural identity. His story itself is not only a subject matter but also a theme. In addition to drawing paintings, the thing he had done is to have had the exhibitions of the paintings drawn by the painters who have drawn the things of our own since a few years. His paintings head toward the original form of Korean image. The artist's painting is so symbolic and suggestive. In fact, the empty space with no pictures suggests the stream and the sky. And azalea blossoms setting on the stream or scattering in the sky as if they were a flower rain falling down the scene revealing a dreary and simple figure. From the bottom of the abyss, the azalea blossoms are born again after becoming the emotional original form. Thus the empty space returns to life in a full space of meaning. His most recent solo exhibition took place at the Gallery Ann during April 6-27 in Seoul, preceded by one held at Insa Art Center on March 29-April 4 in downtown Seoul. nw

Painter Kim Jung-soo

AZALEA;oil on canvas; 80x120cm; 2006

AZALEA;oil on canvas;65x53 cm;2005