[Gallery Walk] "Emptying Out Is Harder"... Meeting Live Drawing Master Kim Jeong-gi

Artist Kim Jung-gi is performing live drawing at his solo exhibition "The Other Side" held at Lotte Museum inside Lotte World Tower in Jamsil-dong, Songpa-gu, Seoul.

[Asia Economy Reporter Donghyun Choi] A giant 10-meter-wide canvas was hung on the exhibition hall wall. Artist Kim Jeong-gi (46, photo) places a folding chair, about ten brushes, ink, and a water container one by one on the right side. He picks up a small brush pen and steps forward to the canvas. With a few movements of his hand, faces and limbs of people quickly emerge. The faster his hand moves, the more intricate the drawing becomes. While fully engrossed in drawing, the artist even exchanges words with the spectators watching him.

This is a scene of Kim’s “live drawing,” where he spontaneously unfolds images from his mind without any preliminary sketches. He is currently holding an exhibition titled “The Other Side” at the Lotte Museum inside Lotte World Tower in Jamsil-dong, Songpa-gu, Seoul. The exhibition features over 2,000 works, including his early comic works, more than 1,000 drawings, large-scale paintings, videos, and photographs. Kim regularly visits the exhibition hall to perform live drawing sessions.

Kim describes live drawing as “art of the process.” When doing live drawing on a large canvas, he roughly plans the big picture in advance. However, the drawings placed in between are created on the spot. In musical terms, it’s like briefly stepping away from the sheet music to improvise. Kim said, “The hardest part is knowing where to stop the brush to finish well when drawing boldly,” adding, “I realize anew that emptying out is harder than filling in.”

The Otherside, 2021, Ink on paper, 90 × 60 cm. (Photo by Lotte Museum)

The main new works unveiled this time are “The Other Side” (2021) and “Haenim Dallim” (2021). In “The Other Side,” the composition is vertically symmetrical, depicting figures and animals wearing spacesuits and diving suits. Their boundary is marked by a pink teddy bear, which is the only element rendered in color. When the painting is rotated 90 degrees, it evokes Michelangelo’s (1475?1564) “The Creation of Adam” from the Renaissance era.

“Haenim Dallim” is a reinterpretation of the traditional folktale of the same name. A young brother and sister escape a tiger by climbing not a rope but a spaceship, becoming the sun and the moon. The work incorporates the artist’s unique imagination.

For Kim, the source of imagination is comics. His childhood dream was to become a comic artist. At six years old, he was captivated by the comic character “Dr. Slump” on the cover of a sketchbook his father gave him as a gift, and he nurtured his dream by copying it. When he liked a comic character, he copied it hundreds or thousands of times. His ability to complete drawings quickly and spontaneously stems from countless repetitions of object visualization practice since childhood. He began his professional career as a comic artist by serializing “Funny Funny” in KTF’s publication “Na” in 2001 and the comic magazine “Young Jump” in 2002.

Exhibition view of artist Kim Jung-ki's solo exhibition 'The Other Side'. (Photo by Lotte Museum)

He began gaining fame starting from his participation in the 2011 Bucheon International Comics Festival. In the exhibition booth provided by the organizers, Kim did not sell his works but drew on three walls, each 8 meters long, for four days. A video capturing this scene became a sensation on YouTube, boosting his recognition. He is more recognized overseas than domestically. In April 2015, one of his original drawings was sold for 12 million KRW at Christie’s auction in London, UK.

Although Kim started as a comic artist, he is currently experimenting across various genres including contemporary art and commercial art. He designed the album jacket for Drunken Tiger’s 10th studio album “X: Reverse of Tiger JK.” He also collaborated with French novelist Bernard Werber. After illustrating Werber’s short story “Paradise” in 2008, he worked on illustrations for the novel “The Third Humanity” in 2013.

Additionally, he has collaborated with global game company Blizzard and SM Entertainment. Kim said, “My greatest strength is having a broad scope and being able to work in various fields,” adding, “Apart from being good at drawing, I want to be an artist who enjoys creation and inspires viewers to want to create themselves.”