[2001~2004년]Kim Myung-Sik①‥A Painter's Haunting Sense of Place

Kodegi Hill, 92×73㎝ oil on canvas, 2001

Kodegi Hill, 92×73㎝ oil on canvas, 2001 The longing for the place of one's origins is one of the most basic and bittersweet of all human emotions. Kim Myung-Sik(서양화가 김명식,김명식 작가), a painter and college art professor from Korea, grew up small town called Kodegi, which completely vanished over the years due to creeping modernization.

This"ghost town"of memory was the subject of some of the most effecting paintings in Kim's recent exhibition at Montserrat Gallery, 584 Broadway, in Soho. Kim Myung-Sik is a lyrical expressionist whose vibrant palett and fluid gestural style effectively evoke a vareity of moods.

East Side Story-4, 64×52in, 2004

East Side Story-4, 64×52in, 2004 His acrylic paintings on Oriental paper have a joyous sense of freedom that is almost child-like,yet they are informed by a sophisticated and mature sensibility, in subjects ranging from Central Park, in New York City, with tall buildings rising above brilliant multicolored trees to the landscape and small dwellings of Kodegi.

Dream of Catskill-11, 48×36 in, 2004

Dream of Catskill-11, 48×36 in, 2004 In his memory-paintings of Kodegi(고데기 동산), Kim combines cultural nostalgia and deeply felt sense of place with a strong sense of abstract design and bold use of color.

In one painting in the series a pagoda-like house apears in swift red outline in a large, rectangle area of brilliant yellow brushed onto the paper in broad strokes. It is juxtaposed with a bright explosion of floral shapes in red,green, and yellow hues that suggest a bouquet.

East Side Story-18, 28×21in, 2004

East Side Story-18, 28×21in, 2004 The mood evoked is at once cheerful and funereal. The flowers, after all, are simply flowers, and unaware that they are participating in an elegy. So the overall feeling of the compositional is finally more celebratory than elegiac.

There is the sense of a cherished childhood memory, an effect enhanced by Kim's(キムミョンシク,Andy Kim,KIM MYUNG SIK,金明植,김명식 화백. 김명식 교수) fresh approach to from and color. △by Marie R Pagano/Monthly Magarzine The Gallery and Studio in New York.

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