
Kim Tschang-Yeul
152.4 x 152.4 x 3.8 cm
When Kim Tschang-Yeul moved to New York in 1965, Pop Art prevailed as the artistic lifeblood of the city. Following a recommendation by his teacher, Kim Whanki, Kim received a scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation to study at the Art Students League of New York. During this time, Kim became acquainted with the artist Nam June Paik who later supported Kim’s participation in the New York Avant Garde Festival in 1969. It was in New York that Kim began his earliest experiments into painting bright, oozing, biomorphic forms—singular bodies that were at once fluid and fractured. Although the forms resemble microscopic biological units, they are painted in vibrant and synthetic hues, perhaps emblematic of an interest in the commercial and artificial that Kim shared with the artist milieu of New York during this time. The fluidity of his forms also anticipates Kim’s later fixation with the subject of the water drop, which he would paint exclusively from the early 1970s until his passing in 2021.
Provenance
Kim Tschang-Yeul EstateExhibitions
The Making of Modern Korean Art: The Letters of Kim Tschang-Yeul, Kim Whanki, Lee Ufan, and Park Seo-Bo, 1961–1982, Tina Kim Gallery, New York, NY, May 5–June 21, 2025.
Kim Tschang-Yeul: New York to Paris, Tina Kim Gallery, New York, NY, October 24, 2019–February 1, 2020.