Kang, Sukho's similar paintings
On the white walls of the exhibition room hang 60 identical paintings. Oil paintings painted on different sizes of a canvas account for about 40 works and the rest of the works are drawings on a paper. A figure on a seemingly perfect square canvases and papers is an unknown man standing with his hands folded behind his back in check jacket from behind. And it is a close-up of a man's waist and buttocks. Such was what his exhibition was, superficially, a scene engaged in Zen dialogue without any additional narration. One may be just embarrassed by the unfamiliar sight of an exhibition if walked into off one's guard.
The exhibition hall with indistinguishable paintings hanging in row after row was as though a scene of clones alike or identical twins standing in lines without a word; also had an unusual and uncomfortable aura, a subtle feeling hard to explain, of a certain kind of virtual space. In such a place leisurely sensibility is completely run down. One has to go through the inconvenience of having to strain one's sensory organs to find hidden leads. Usually, an exhibition, including individual works of art, could be easily appreciated or even if it is not the case, it could be comprehended to a certain extent by a clue given from each work. However, his works show simplicity of form; and his exhibition lacks feasible title and captions for each work as if the artist himself considers it ignoble to talk about his works. Then so will it be.
His pictures seem to raise a question of 'painting' itself. Yet, in order to keep up with his critical thinking one need to make an approach somewhat prudently. Pictures of a single subject painted repeatedly seem, at a glance, to be replicas of one picture, but in fact they are pictures bearing a great resemblance to each other or similar pictures. The moment one regards his paintings as being the same, there is a risk of falling into an unintended trap. Pitfalls that interfere with deciphering seem to lie everywhere in his paintings as if the paintings themselves defy to be easily read: a monotonous repetition, visual enlargement, partial composition, symbolism of an object, flatness of a canvas, concepts, and even the check attire, that seem to be a kind of tip-offs, could be pits that hinder a proper interpretation. It means they are not important points rather than decisive pitfalls. It would be just to say that they are a kind of incidental devices the artist enjoyed to employ. Those elements seem to interact organically on a canvas, playing the role, although vaguely, to produce a dramatic effect of the artist's idea. His paintings may appear the same at first glance, but if one took a careful look at them, each work has a minute difference of tones and tremoring touch of lines and forms. A more thorough look at the paintings will show one that a matiere on a canvas or a touch of a brush works totally independent in each painting; therefore, paintings may be similar but not the same, and they may appear similar but different. And such an aspect may be the attribute of painting the artist is focusing on.
No matter how superb an ability of painting may be, it has limits and shortcomings. The fact that pictures are never painted the same would be one of them. On the other hand, it may be the utmost virtue of painting. Playing with the subtle feature of painting, the point stated above may make the case in below experiments. First, trying to duplicate a large number of paintings. Second, painting only one object for numerous times. Of course, both cases are in fact not so different from each other. In both cases, although the former is on the premise that ‘identical paintings’ are painted and the latter is on the premise that ‘a single object’ is painted, they result in painting ‘similar paintings.’ In either case his works seem to come in contact with essential principles of life. It may seem rather foolhardy to paint the same subject over and over again, but as a repetition is a core principle of life and nature, a misunderstanding of the rashness is resolved. In addition, the very fact that paintings may be similar but never the same looks highly natural for a heacceity is an important intrinsic nature of every matter without exception. Likewise, on the basis of the substantial principles he analogizes and ponders upon fundamentals of painting as he paints his ‘painting.’ Then his works could be called, as expected, ‘play with painting’ taking place on the edge of the essence of painting.
In other words, he is playing a fun painting game with a painterly topic on a canvas while balancing between sensibility and emotion in his peculiar method. He is sure to have understanding of physical and chemical principles running on infinite space of a white canvas. He must have experienced a kind of intricate circuits crossing between an object and himself centering a canvas; and mediums among the circuits as well. Introspection of in what way painting is stretching over between nature and himself is also likely. Eventually, what he must have confirmed through his work is probably a dull truth such as, ‘identical paintings could never exist, yet they are similar’ or ‘there are ten different me’s in ten portraits.’
Yet, does he know that his paintings have an attitude?
Anyway his paintings were worth every penny.
- Kim, Eull
