Kim Tschang-Yeul, 〈Composition〉, 1970. Acrylic and cellulose lacquer on canvas. 63.79x53.54inches (162x136cm).

Tina Kim Gallery presents its first solo exhibition of Kim Tschang-Yeul (b. 1929), on view from October 24 through December 7, 2019. The exhibition focuses on Kim’s early bodies of work from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, surveying the evolution of the artist’s signature painting style when he lived between New York and Paris. Born in 1929 in Maengsan in North Korea, Kim Tschang-Yeul spent his childhood amid the turmoil of the Korean War and postcolonial liberation. He later fled to South Korea as the North saw a dramatic rise in Communist influence. After studying painting at the Seoul National University, Kim established the Modern Artists’ Association—later renamed as Actuel—in 1958. He joined Korea’s Art Informel movement that same year along with a group of avant-garde artists including renowned Dansaekhwa masters Park Seo-Bo and Chung Sang-Hwa. The artist paints the drops themselves with an exactness that leads the viewer to question their own vision or the act of seeing. Their hyperrealism at first glance instills a desire to touch the canvas, tricking the eye in the style of Op-Art. One notes though that the beads find their form not in the depiction of the water, but in their implied surroundings and the optical effects they generate. Kim himself, through his continuous return to water, finds his identity as an artist and an expatriate through his circumstances as the drops find theirs through light and shadow. In displaying several historic works by Kim Tschang-Yeul, this exhibition at Tina Kim Gallery showcases and traces the artist’s path to settling on the motif that would occupy his entire four-decade-long career.

Further information:
http://www.tinakimgallery.com/exhibitions/kim-tschang-yeul/press-release