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What's New | Calendar | Current
Exhibition | Auction Asian American Arts Centre Presents: Yeong Gill Kim July 11th to August 1st, 2008
Yeong Gill Kim is a Korean American artist who has lived in NY for many years. He saw the transition in Korea from a feudal society to a modern country and the confusion it brought to the people. By 1995 he had given up purely contemporary idioms and returned to materials and ideas that had inspired so much of Korea's artistic tradition. Inflected by modernity in the uniformity of the color of the strokes, by the washed surface, his gesture to contemporary times is there, and to that extent, to the West. The complexity of his brush work on muslin has attained a breathtaking clarity and simplicity. Yeong Gill Kim paintings depend on accidental effects of an unplanned working process. He first does spontaneous rough drawing in black acrylic on large canvas using thick brushes When the basic drawing is mostly dried, he puts the canvas into the bathtub and washes it. When it is dried, the technique leaves dimly visible traces with the exquisite variations on a empty ground of refined gray tones. Then he adds quick brush strokes which resemble calligraphy and abstract figures in misty landscapes. The artist maintains a strong interest in Zen thought, and his quick and swift working process reflects the spontaneity of Zen art in which a momentary record of internal mind states is emphasized.
As the curator, Robert Lee has said, "Yeong reminds us of William Ivins book Prints and Visual Communications, pointing the way to a vision de-rationalized. By emphasizing an Asian visual language he avoids the problems of 'syntactical dodge' that evolved in Western print culture. Thus he shows that contemporary art in America need not be founded on a break with the past, nor on claims of a new age of global technology. He demonstrates that a crisis of identity, a gap born of two irreconcilable cultures, can be spanned with a renewed confidence in the vitality of one's Asian traditions." With a disarming soft spoken simplicity Kim brings innovations to indigenous Asian traditions and points to a direction for a diverse American society. This exhibition is organized by Robert Lee with the assistant of Adliana Bahrin. Asian American Arts Centre, Inc. is supported, in part with public funds from The New York State Council on the Arts, and The National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. With additional funding and support from Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, 9.11 Fund, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Manhattan Mini Storage/Edison Properties Inc, Materials for the Arts, Pearl River Mart, United Orient Bank, New York Cosmopolitan Lions Club, Con Edison, the University of Hong Kong, Dedalus Foundation, The Nonprofit Finance Fund, WTC Business Recovery Fund, Expedi Printing, Inc., Jody and John Arnhold, Danny C.K. Li, Jeanne Lee Jackson, Linda Peng, Wing Lee Yee, John Yu, and the many generous friends of the Asian American Arts Centre. |
