Herald Economy | Forget the Tedious Monsoon While Looking at These Rich, Flavorful Paintings
Herald Economy introduced Kim Hyun Jung's work "Naesoong Tteolrim (Trembling Coyness)" on July 24, 2013, describing how she paints a "21st-century genre painting" mixing the classical and the contemporary through a surreal image of a woman in hanbok wearing headphones, surrounded by animals such as a hippopotamus, zebra, and elephant. The work was included in the group exhibition "Speaking of Being Moved" at Gallery IS.
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[Herald Economy = Lee Young-ran, Senior Reporter] What music could this young woman be listening to, to be so lost in a trance?
A woman elegantly dressed in a purple hanbok listens to music through headphones. Piled atop her head are a hippopotamus, a zebra, and an elephant.
This painting, showing an utterly incomprehensible, "out-of-nowhere incongruity," is "Naesoong Tteolrim (Trembling Coyness)" by rising painter Kim Hyun Jung (25).
A graduate of Seoul National University's Department of Oriental Painting, Kim freely mixes the classical and the contemporary, dream and reality, on her canvas. Believing that a painting allows the imagination to soar without limit, her goal is to create a "21st-century genre painting" that anyone can relate to.
That's why she realistically depicts a woman neatly dressed in hanbok gripping an aluminum pot and slurping down ramen in a storm(?), or drooling in front of a pair of luxury shoes. This is how her series about people who appear utterly elegant on the outside but are, at heart, pure snobs, came to be.
The artist said, "After painting it earnestly, I realized it was ultimately a picture of myself," explaining that the work pokes fun at the false consciousness of modern people who fail to live guided by their inner selves and instead live overly conscious of those around them.
Kim Hyun Jung's work was included in the exhibition "Speaking of Being Moved," organized by Gallery IS (CEO Han Su-jeong) in Gwanhun-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul. Running through July 29, the exhibition brings together ten invited artists in addition to Kim Hyun Jung: Kwon Doo-hyun, Kim Jung-soo, Doo Min, Min Seong-sik, Park Hyun-woong, Sung Young-rok, Han Seul, Han Jo-young, and Hwang Soon-il.
Visitors can encounter Kwon Doo-hyun's lively brushwork expressing an idealized paradise hard to capture on camera; Kim Jung-soo's work expressing longing for her mother through a rice bowl filled with azalea petals; Doo Min's work showing the duality of life through dice; and Min Seong-sik's paintings, the result of repeated experiments with new kinds of landscape.
Also on view are Park Hyun-woong's warm, brightly colored fairy-tale fantasies painted on three-dimensional wooden panels; Sung Young-rok's expression of the beauty of plum blossoms through traditional Oriental painting technique; Han Seul's work suggesting the eruption and realization of desire by depicting commodified objects; Han Jo-young's work capturing the psychology of modern people amid grand nighttime cityscapes; and Hwang Soon-il's work examining human nature through hyperrealistic technique. 34 works in total.
Han Su-jeong, CEO of Gallery IS, said, "With the economic downturn continuing, I wanted to offer comfort to people's weary hearts, so I organized this exhibition." 02-736-6669
yrlee@heraldcorp.com