Artwork Information
Polka-Dot series began in the early 1990s with canvas and acrylic. Despite the eye’s natural tendency to be drawn to geometrically arranged dots, the background on which dots are so neatly placed upon has as much significance as dots themselves. Similar to the parts of wooden panel works previously produced, the background has abstract expressionistic quality with gestural marks. Such contradiction or tension between dots and the background may be read as yet another Kim’s interests in play with perception. However, Kim’s primary purpose of the polka dot paintings is more centered on criticism of Modernism with the visual language born out of Modernism. For example, careful examination of each polka dot painting reveals that painting is tainted with smudges, hastily written words, unidentifiable marks, and molds from intentionally neglecting the works in a storage without any temperature control. In fact, Kim has admitted that he feels great pleasure in handling the works so recklessly, to the point of ruining the condition of the works. From this process of artistic production, the abstract expressionistic quality of the background can be read as a separate work of Modernism that Kim is against at and other numerous distasteful marks on the canvas can be seen as the formal language that criticizes Modernism. Yet, the background that exudes the impression of high Modernism is nevertheless his own production, not of “real” Modern artists. Thus, the series of polka dot paintings is virtually a self-reflection, a criticism of his own involvement with Korean Modernism in his earlier artistic career. Kim continues to investigate the meaning of abstraction and the legacy of Modernism, of which are part of process of answering his grand question for himself: “Why do I do art?” Furthermore, idea of self-reflection also arises from the discovery of imperfection of painting that is not visible from far distance. Visual reception of a change of senses due to looking at the works at different distances prompts viewers to realize their dependence on “imperfect organs.”

Kim’s view on Korean Modernism is well preserved in his statement in the article, “What Modernism has Left,” published in Kyegan Misool in 1986: “above all, the meaning of modernism for us has been designated the direction of the minus. It heads toward the simple rather than the complicated, reduction rather than expansion, decline rather than growth, introvert rather then extrovert, silence rather than utterance, death rather than life.” From this view, we know that he was (and still is) frustrated with both authoritative nature and limitation of Modernism. According to Park Chan-kyung, dots give an opportunity for Kim to be freed from his frustration because dots are “non-authoritative” given that they are familiar to us, to everyone. In other words, dots defy the very notion of artistic genius or the notion of art as a production of single “god-like artist.” Still, the “placement” of a work of art continues to strive for authority. Kim’s effort to further de-authorizes his works—as a process of democratizing—can be more conspicuously found in his minimalistic painting with rectangles that remind us of Malevich’s signature paintings. The space in which these works are displayed and hang is visually transferred onto the canvas, thus “double” experience of viewers with both space and the works of art becomes synthesized, which Park describes it as “mutual architectural devices.” Art becomes space, and space becomes art.

150 HO