Im Chun-hee –Walking into a Blurred Landscape
As I am wearing glasses, I carefully observe other people’s eyeglasses whenever I see them. I imagine countlesseyeglasses floating in the sky like umbrellas. Those wearing eyeglasses, which indicate their preference, taste, and sense, look at the world through their eyeglasses. Im Chun-hee brings to mind her playful face, in extremely small eyeglasses, along with her pictures. She mumbles something, shows her imagination, and looking at the world through her eyeglasses. Her hands become busy when fully inspired by her imagination. As her sight grows with this imagination and emotion, her agitated mind and hands stay in a weird posture, halting their wandering for a while. Her feelings hang like icicles.
In Im’s recent work, featuring a world where the artist lives and breadths, and all that she sees through infinite curiosity and affection, her emotion and imagination appear affluent and gentle. The paints and colors are applied to plywood, jangji(traditional sliding-door paper), or canvas, and show blurred, hazy contours. They evoke heat waves, blurring clear contours. There are no boundaries and lines in nature. Grasses do not shape any specific form, so dissolve any boundaries. They just change. There are no determined hues in nature. In her work, nature’s brushwork appears sensuous. Streamlined form gradually emerges and greens melt with the sunlight, and feel cozy. Unpredictable situations take place in a severely blurred landscape of green.
Plants grow rapidly and mountains crouch like docile animals. People stand or prostrate themselves between them, metamorphosing instantly into the sea and waves. The mountains are like endless surging waves and are the source of images and imagination. Nearby, an enormous figure appears as a unique symbol in the painting. It hugs the mountains with its thick, huge arms, or it swims. Two people who also appear are submerged under water. A woman with her back to the viewer gazes outside the canvas. She looks over the mountains, trees, the sun, and the moon. She seems to be the artist, or a part of the environment, nature, or the world that she faces. The artist sees nature in front of her, imagining diverse forms nestled within nature. Im names such images and represents them in paintings after calling to her inner self. Nature resembles her feelings. Nature is fixed but changes diversely, while being gazed at. To depict nature is thus difficult.
Im Chun-hee always views nature, like a mountain, that is lenient and benevolent, embracing all. It presents variousforms and colors within different times and seasons. Asian people feel the mountain as generous and gentle. Its attributes appear merciful and show no discrimination. Those who draw pictures of it feel awe before this amazing capability of nature.
As nature is so strong, Im is impressed by it. The tension between nature and the artist rises high. If subordinated by nature, she will lose. This is perhaps why she depicts a woman in boxing gloves in her paintings!She goes her own way, cheered by something invisible. Im depicts what she views in nature with the determined mind of a boxer. A dreaming fist!.
After moving to Maseok, Im’s paintingsunderwent a big change to recall a thesis titled Impact of an Environmental Change in an Artist’s World. Her life environment surrounded with ever-changing nature and strange serenity probably made an impact on her art world. On my way to the Shin Ha-soon’s studio, I passed near Im’s studio. Its great, abstruse scenic beauty is still fresh in my mind. As she lives her everyday life within a mountain, her work is imbued with nature. "Like the kaleidoscope of the world, a variety of things wiggle in the place surrounded by range after range of mountains" (the artist’s statement). Im diligently follows such interestingly changing shapes, deciding to enter a landscape. The landscape speaks to her and presents all it wants to show. The artist spends a day with the sky, mountains, and trees. Her work is more overwhelmed by nature than her previous pieces. In her painting she becomes one with nature. The dialogue she exchanges with nature becomes her painting.
The titles of her paintings are interesting. Although the paintings feel somewhat serious, cold, and fresh, such titles are even humorous, resembling her way of talking. Living a life and doing an art work often bring about this imbalance and cracked harmony. Her humors and leeway glitters in her eyeglasses. Im’s painting is a collection of such lights.
By Park Young-taik / Kyonggi University Professor & Art Critic
