Born in 1929 in what is now 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 Seoul National University, Kim joined Korea’s Art Informel movement along with a group of avant-garde artists, including renowned Dansaekhwa masters Park Seo-Bo and Chung Sang-Hwa. As one of the first generations of Korean modernist painters, Kim participated in the Paris Biennale in 1961 and the São Paulo Biennale in 1965—exhibitions that opened the door for the artist to embark on his artistic career abroad that would span more than 40 years.

Shortly after relocating from New York to Paris in 1969, Kim first exhibited his signature waterdrop painting, Événement de la nuit (1970), at the Salon de Mai in Paris in 1972. From that point on, the water drop became a persistent and profound symbol in his practice. Informed by Taoist philosophy, Kim regarded the droplet as an emblem of “full emptiness”—a visual meditation on impermanence, fragility, and resilience. His lifelong devotion to this motif functioned both as a spiritual discipline and as a response to personal and historical trauma, reflecting his pursuit of simplicity, humility, and the dissolution of ego.

Throughout his career, Kim continued to refine and reimagine the waterdrop, transforming it into a multifaceted inquiry into materiality, perception, and transcendence. Created in 1983, Déconstruction exemplifies the evolution of this motif into more intricate compositions, incorporating clusters of droplets and subtle wet marks to evoke movement, temporality, and a quiet emotional resonance.