Is it a brick or not, is it a shadow or not… The more you look into it, the more mysterious it becomes

In an age of grand narratives, a young man's gaze lingered on the insignificant. "A single strand of grass gathers to form a field, and the smallest grain of sand and soil builds a grand building. Ultimately, a nation is built by a single, precious person." Having navigated the dictatorship, the young man began to depict marginalized places, the stones that compose them, the grass, bricks, and sand that make up the fields. He continued to focus on the sand for half a century. He would later come to be known as the "Brick Painter."

The Sungkok Art Museum, located on Gyeonghuigung-gil in Jongno-gu, Seoul, is hosting the exhibition "Kim Kang-yong: Hyperrealistic Bricks" since the 13th. This exhibition features the works of Kim Kang-yong, the seventh artist featured in the "Korean Senior Artists Invitational Exhibition," which has been running since 2009. This large-scale retrospective spans nearly 50 years of his artistic career, from his early works produced in the mid-1970s to his most recent works.

The exhibition is broadly divided into three periods, showcasing the artist's life. The 1970s is a period typified by his "Reality + Field" series. Under a blue sky, a stone wall has been horribly broken and collapsed; a valley with a no-trespassing sign floating down the mountain and a barbed-wire fence; a grassy field reminiscent of a commoner's home. His characteristically meticulous reproductions emphasize the sense of place. The emotion evoked by the broken and collapsed bricks offers a hint as to why he later became a "brick painter."

The second period (1980s and 1990s) is when he featured sand and earth as the protagonists of his work. During this period, his "Reality + Field" series no longer simply depicted hyperrealistically with paint on canvas. Instead, he applied sand directly to the canvas and drew shadows upon it. This period marked the most profound transformation in his work, marked by his encounter with sand.

Since the 2000s, Kim Kang-yong's sand brick work has evolved into a unique world, blurring the boundaries between figuration and abstraction. His trademark bricks are monotone, sometimes tinged with color. Now a researcher of the formative nature of the canvas itself, he presents his works with a matured technique, creating magical images. The sand and shadows applied to the canvas have become more dense, making the fake bricks appear more real than before. At the same time, he strikes the viewer with insubstantial devices like red and blue shadows. This is a stage where representational work is evaluated as transitioning into conceptual work, and it marks a transition from "reality + field" to "reality + image," where the subject of the painting becomes established as an image within a place. When

first confronted with his post-2000s works, everyone's reaction is the same. Straining your eyes and trying to see again and again is futile. Blinking is equally ineffective. You stand before the canvas for hours, feeling like an idiot, but the canvas is not a three-dimensional object, a beautifully colored brick stacked up in real time. It's merely an optical illusion. Only when you're certain do you feel a sense of wonder, like a child returning to innocence. Artist Kim Kang-yong, whom I met at the exhibition, said, "I want to provide a visual experience unlike anything you've ever experienced before. And a powerful one at that."

He also revealed the secrets of his work. He mixes fine, sieved sand with adhesive and spreads it evenly across the canvas. He soaks the canvas in water for a day, then precisely carves out spaces for bricks of different colors. He then fills them with new sand—a technique known as inlay. He then paints shadows with oil paint. The sand applied to the canvas is as thin as a grain of sand. Regarding the process, Lee Soo-kyun, head of the curatorial research department, described it as "a process close to self-cultivation." He said even the slightest error is unacceptable, and even though he hired technicians, they were ineffective. "Incorporating all the colors was a tremendous challenge," Kim said. "I worked with a plasterer, but he waved them off, saying, 'We can build a building, but we can't do this.'"

The process of preparing the materials is also part of the work. Initially, he collected sand from the Han River as a single material. Later, he collected various sands from all over the country, allowing the light and texture of different sands to coexist within a single canvas. His materials expanded to include colorful industrial silica sand, ground from natural stone and marble. A glimpse into his studio, seen through photographs, reveals plastic containers and baskets filled with place names like Sokcho, Sacheon, and Hwajinpo, all written in marker.

 

His retrospective offers more reading than any other exhibition. Its rich interpretations feel like a thick encyclopedia.

Perhaps because of the imagery conjured by the metaphor of humans returning to dust, this life spent immersed in sand feels like the lifelong question of an existentialist. While clearly a hyper-realistic figurative painting, it also conveys a sense of sublimity, like Mark Rothko's massive color-field abstraction. The confident lines are clear and cool, yet the more you examine the painting, the more it blurs into a complex web of conflicting elements, revealing a mystical ambiguity. The passage, which induces learned biases—thinking bricks will look like this and shadows like this—and then declares everything an illusion, feels like an attempt at enlightenment. The moment you realize that the work poses a philosophical question between the virtual and the real, using virtual bricks that seem more real than the real, you can't help but think of French philosopher Jean Baudrillard's simulacra. It seems to foresee today, where AI (artificial intelligence) and VR (augmented reality), virtual subjects and virtual realities, unfold before our eyes.

His works, brimming with intellectual playfulness, contrast with the unreadable, empty shells of his work. In an era where cultural products masquerading as art and Instagrammable images overflow with uncontemplative sensory excess, his works silently proclaim, "Be gone, shells!" They demonstrate that the most classic is modern, and the most authentic is futuristic, offering a moment of contemplation that only authentic painting can offer. Perhaps this introspective time, forced by the virus, offers an opportunity to embrace the contemplative moments that painting offers.

Because the exhibition encompasses 50 years of his career, it's fascinating to explore the artist's work in reverse chronological order, from his most recent works to his past. The joy of uncovering and deducing the secrets of today's enigmatic paintings lies in their past. We also discover things we know now but didn't then. After examining the present, we travel back in time to his early works, and we come across a young man who, rather than a painter who painted reality with hyperrealism, was awakened to the sublime early on.

A 50-year retrospective is also a 50-year innovation. He says the meaning of sand has also changed for him. While it initially began as a metaphor for the sublimity of the individual, today, to him, a grain of sand is a dot. The planes formed by dots and lines create a mystical canvas. Kim elaborated that the exhibition, divided into three periods, could also be divided into four, distinguishing the "latest works" period. It's as if he wants to signal the beginning of a new phase, a new innovation, not an end, but a beginning. Until September 20th.

by. Kim Ye-jin / https://www.segye.com/newsView/20200827520783?OutUrl=naver