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| Kim Myong-hi's 'Drinking Tea' (2004) / Courtesy of artist and Art Projects International, New York |
By Kwon Mee-yoo
Artist Kim Myong-hi lives a modern nomadic life, but in an extreme way. She divides her time between an abandoned school-turned-house in the remote countryside in Gangwon Province and fancy loft in SoHo, New York.
Such an experience has led her to explore contemporary themes of territorial division, rural exodus, migration and displacement in her signature oil pastels on chalkboard. "Myong Hi Kim: Portraits," an exhibition at Art Projects International in New York, revisits her oeuvre centering on figure paintings.
"I am showing earlier works this time. Figure was my major subject when I started to work on chalkboards from 1993. The protagonist in the story I tell in my paintings are myself. Imagining myself as a girl who missed a school excursion or wondering what the future will bring ("The Girl") or fashioning as a spiritual being ("Dongja with Peach"). And the women ironing and serving tea is an actual self-portrait," Kim said at an e-mail interview with The Korea Times.
Dislocation has been the theme of her works continuously and, for the artist, dislocation can mean physical separation, but it can also mean the loss of self.
"They may appear as realistic portraits, but the vision that I present is that of apparition rather than appearance. Anyone who has witnessed the metamorphosis of an everyday object into a metaphysical entity on the canvas cannot but be spellbound by its magic. What I am working on is the interspace where reality is renegotiated and new consciousness is embodied."
"I keep record of people I meet for future reference and take time to go through the process of writing an epic poem for each of my works, gaining experience, drawing on my imagination, setting up characters and their narratives and choosing a mode of expression. After this process I am able to execute them visually," the artist said.
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| Kim Myong-hi in front of her school house studio in a tiny mountain village in Gangwon Province in 1995 / Courtesy of Art Projects International, New York |
Kim, a graduate of Seoul National University, headed to the Pratt Institute, New York in 1975 to study further as it was difficult for married women to pursue a career in Korea back then. Kim married Kim Tchah-sup, an artist she met in Seoul, in New York.
Kim Tchah-sup, best known for his stone field paintings, began to gain a presence in the late 70s and she decided to support him first until their lives became stable, running a select fashion store in New York.
"It is well known that making a living is not easy for artist couples. Although I was struggling to make a living I always considered myself an artist. The drawings I made at the time caught the eye of Mrs. Kim Whan-ki who introduced me to a prestigious gallery in Seoul in 1987 and the exhibition became a sold out show," Kim said.
Her use of oil pastel and chalkboard was inspired by her move to the school studio back in 1990 after spending 15 years in the Big Apple. The couple did not move to a convenient metropolis similar to New York but to a remote, mountainous region in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province.
"My husband was not well at the time so we needed to change our environment. And while we were traveling in Europe we saw a show at Tate Modern in London of German artist Anselm Kiefer's works done in an abandoned school building in a remote countryside area of Germany. It gave me a revelation that Korea must be going through a similar social change. Because of industrialization the rural population was reduced drastically in many parts of the world," she said.
Kim said that the difference is between city life and rural life, not between the United States and Korea.
"My main residence is New York at the moment, but when I need serene nature, I head to Naepyeong-ri, where I have my school studio. To sharpen my perceptions, I like to travel through China and Siberia and New Mexico, 'zooming in and zooming out,' so to speak."
"Perhaps this mobility has had the effect of my grappling with the issues of dislocation, both in my work and my life. As a child of a diplomat, I moved from country to country as I was growing up, and I find myself still dominated by a sense of rootlessness," Kim said.
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| Kim Myong-hi's 'Girl' (2006) / Courtesy of artist and Art Projects International, New York |
Kim captures light delicately against the darkness of the chalkboard with oil pastel which resembles the texture of chalk and retains its brilliance of color on chalkboard.
"During the period of intense questioning, I began to draw children on a chalkboard, which I had been using as a barrier against bitter cold winter draft in my school studio. As I drew the boys, it was as if I could feel them coming to life. The feeling was so intense it took me by surprise. 'The power of image.' The children are no longer in the school. Because I am drawing from imagination, I'm depicting something that does not exist. And yet, I'm willing something into existence by an act of imagination ― an act that helps me overcome my sense of loss and absence."
"On the other hand, I have discovered that people have a strong nostalgia for the chalkboard. They tend to look at images on a chalkboard differently than they would the same images on a canvas. This is probably due to the symbolic nature of the chalkboard itself. In people's minds, the chalkboard has come to symbolize continuity and preservation of culture and at the same time the fact that it is constantly being written and erased symbolizes temporariness of our memory and life," she said.
In her 2004 work "Drinking Tea," a video is attached to the painting, showing the "image of the mind" of the tea server.
"As for the use of video images, the dialogue that takes place in the dual presence of the moving and stationary images on the same surface has the power to pull the viewer into the present. A picture within a picture.
"Namjune Paik used to live right across the street in SoHo where my studio is. We visited each other's studio frequently. This is when I realized the vocabulary of video images could be incorporated to add another dimension to my work. I might add that I have had a fascinating experience as I tried to harmonize the colors on the monitor and the colors of paint. For me, the so-called 'the end of the painting' has yielded an unexpected opportunity to expand its boundary," Kim said.
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| Installation view of 'Myong Hi Kim: Portraits' at Art Projects International, New York / Courtesy of Art Projects International, New York |
Kim's 1995 solo exhibition at Gallery Won in Seoul first introduced her chalkboard paintings, depicting the sense of loss resulting from dislocation, while her 2003 exhibition focused on how this dislocation can give birth to a renewed will to live and create.
"Unable or unwilling to stay in one place through four seasons, the 2015 Art Projects International show 'The New Four Seasons' was my way of making myself whole through images," she explained.
Kim hopes to transform her school studio into a museum where her and her husband's artwork and antique collection as well as works by fellow artists will be exhibited.
"My vision is to turn the land into a park with several earthworks. Consequently revitalize the forgotten rural community from absence to presence. I hope this grand dream will come true," the artist said.
