The Timing of Painting, 

Too Early or Too Late

 

 Kim Noam

 

It is mesmerizing that time captures us, artists, or rather, we are captured by time. Interesting and magical visions and images appear before us in the face of painting. Upon meeting up with painterly images, time stops its seemingly eternal movement. What we learned as the rule of art was that the form and the content must be in harmony. However, that goal is way too high up for us to reach in reality. Artists document and end their art history on their way to reach it.

 

The term art scene, or art field, was once popular. Somehow it has an impression of an intellectual and critical concept rather than the term art world. It is a term frequently used in the art world during the period when civil movements, labor movements, and democratization movements were growing on the streets. The field has existential nuances of being present. It embraces the contemporary view on the world, humanity, art, and the attitude toward life. 

 

At the Chongkundang Yesuljisang special exhibition, we can get to know the art field through the paintings of the three artists, Kook Dongwan, Park Mira, and Han Jihyoung. Through their activities and works, we encounter a new generation of paintings standing in the midst of contemporary Korean painting. The way we perceive, interpret, and express the vivid presence of art and culture has changed with each era. Through the artists and their works introduced by the Chongkundang Yesuljisang, we experienced how paintings have been expressed dynamically, with the particular energy involved, in the field of contemporary Korean art. A high level of plasticity, keen sensitivity, deep insight and profound thought have been manifested through each artist's unique personality. The period in which they devoted themselves to the creative endeavor was a time of great crisis, opportunity, and new changes not only in art but also in our society. As we experience the exhibitions and artworks, we examine at every moment what kind of themes and emotions art conveys between individuals and society.  

 

The story of a two-eyed man in a village of one-eyed people is a familiar fable. The suffering of a prophet who claims to know the future but is believed by no one is also a familiar narrative. The myth of the seer has a deep root in the art world. Intuition, insight, and premonition are like drawing the eyes and knowledge of the future into the present and putting them to use. 

 

The 2025 Chongkundang Yesuljisang is not only about the present, but also about the special experiences and formative adventures of each period since its launch in 2012, which the organizers and artists have created together. Long-term perspective is essential, lest everything may become unstable and dependent on sheer luck. Why did prehistoric people leave petroglyphs in the deepest places that humans can reach? Could it be that they were like time capsules, communicating with people who are closer to eternity, people in the distant future, to convey and help them understand their lives and fates?

 

We, who live in the twenty-first century, live in a kind of permanent present that has no organic relationship with the public past of the era. And for the generation that grew up in such an environment, both the past and the future converge into the present. All artistic questions and answers must be resolved within the present. We cannot ignore the historical background of important issues and phenomena in our reality. However, in most cases, we forget the historical background and context and intuitively make judgments and actions.

 

Artists who seek new themes and forms of expression naturally repeatedly experience this period of transitional confusion and disorder. When river water meets the sea, it does not merge immediately. Fresh water and sea water become one very slowly through a very long length, wide surface, depth, width, and time. Creativity and wonder are events that occur at the border between freshwater and saltwater. In a chaotic field where colors, densities, and properties all violently mix together, they very slowly and gradually find an ideal balance. We read about the individual and society, nature and civilization, spirit and world in the works of contemporary artists. I try to empathize and understand. The Chongkundang Yesuljisang is not an annual event that repeats the past every year. It provides an opportunity to conceive new ways of perception and visions while living and breathing in every moment and empathizing without being immersed in everyday life and reality.