[Gallery Walk] The 'Pictorial Frequency' That Forms the Universe and the World

Kim Youngheon Solo Exhibition 'Frequency'
At Hakgojae Gallery Until the 20th

"If there is a part where digital systems long for analog attributes, it would be the point where artificial intelligence data physically contacts humans through sound or sensation. Perhaps that is why, even when busy, people make sure to take out an LP and place the needle to listen?the noise-mixed music feels as comforting as a beloved hometown house."

Kim Youngheon, P23049-Electronic Nostalgia, 2023, Oil on Linen [Photo courtesy of Hakgojae]

Artist Kim Youngheon, who has been shaping reflections on the universe and origins through a new sensibility of digitality, explains that the characteristic of 20th-century painting lies in modernity. He perceives the flatness of modernist painting as its essence and pursues the purity of painting under the premise of flatness.

Hakgojae Gallery in Sogyeok-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul, is hosting Kim Youngheon's solo exhibition "Frequency" until the 20th. The artist says that in the digital age, "new painting" can mix with anything, breaking away from purity. In this solo exhibition, he presents 22 works from the series "Electronic Nostalgia," which embody this idea.

The characteristic of painting in our era, represented by digitality, is an artificial and new sensibility different from the sensations felt in nature. Noise on TV cathode ray tubes, distorted scenes on computer screens, the temporal distortion sensation from fast-forwarding videos, and exposure to unexpected information or images. The artist calls this new sensibility "Electronic Nostalgia." This digitality is directly implanted in his works, giving birth to a new kind of painting never seen before.

The artist completed this series through various attempts, such as clashing incompatible colors to create exquisite matches or destroying established forms to generate new sensations.

Kim Youngheon, P23043-Electronic Nostalgia, 2023, Oil on Linen [Photo courtesy of Hakgojae]

The exhibition title "Frequency" originates from the contrast of a new form in the digitality era where anything can be mixed, unlike the purity of modernist painting that aims for painting without any other artistic elements from different genres. In works where lines meet to form vertical line clusters, these clusters sometimes flow like liquid, sometimes feel solid like a solid, and sometimes create the impression of a light gas.

Just as frequencies of different heterogeneous things accidentally align to form harmony, in painting, noise, complementary colors, and antagonism become visual wonders through accidental pictorial frequencies. This is the realm the artist pursues. He names this pictorial frequency "Frequency."

The work "P23043-Electronic Nostalgia," which captures attention in the exhibition, realizes waves through concentric circle shapes.

Resembling a white hole in the universe, it metaphorically represents the origin that signals the beginning of the world. The artist, who said he once experienced a sensation of distorting and transforming space-time while captivated by the movement of waves while fishing as a child, reflects that experience in this work, completing a piece that finds harmony through repeated clashes and unions of colors.

The surface colors and planes, fluorescent colors, and the method of composing cut screens may evoke digital screens at first glance, but the striped patterns reminiscent of brush strokes, scattered paint, palette knife marks, geometric lines, and scratches reveal analog attributes. The artist solidifies his unique pictorial imagination through the coexistence and opposition of analog continuity and digital discontinuity, geometric waveforms and free waveforms, and heterogeneous pictorial elements.

In particular, unpredictable elements such as brushstroke stripes and geometric color planes made with a palette knife leave and add creative elements that only humans can produce, like variables in analog music, distorted TV screens, or scratches in film movies, completing the works.

Artist Kim Youngheon.
[Photo by Hakgojae]

After earning a master's degree from Hongik University’s Department of Painting and Chelsea College of Arts at the University of the Arts London, the artist has attracted attention in the art world with innovative installation art. Installations featuring human forms made from animal wings or experimental mice delivered a fresh shock to the art scene in the 1990s.

After studying in the UK, the artist shifted to painting and has been following a new axis called "new painting," traveling between New York, France, and Hong Kong. While previous painters focused on reproducing the external world, expressing imagery, and pursuing formal beauty, Kim Youngheon continues to compose paintings based on conclusions drawn from reflections on the essence of the universe and the world.