‘TOWARDS: There Was Light’ presents around 30 paintings tracing four decades of the artist’s engagement with nature

Gallery Hyundai is presenting “TOWARDS: There Was Light,” a solo exhibition examining Kim Bohie’s paintings through her sustained interest in light, nature and accumulated time.

Running through Oct. 18, the exhibition marks Kim’s first solo presentation in Korea since “the Days” at the Jeju Museum of Contemporary Art in 2022. It is also her first solo exhibition with Gallery Hyundai since 1988.

Around 30 paintings are on view, including new works from the “Towards” series depicting Kim’s garden and the sea surrounding Jeju, flowers, fruit and her longtime companion dog Leo. The exhibition also includes the large-scale work “The Days,” which was presented in the Unlimited sector of Art Basel in Basel earlier this year.

Kim, born in 1952, combines materials and formal qualities associated with East Asian painting with the chromatic fields and expanded scale of contemporary painting. She works on canvas and hanji, repeatedly applying mixtures of mineral pigments, water and animal glue to build translucent layers of colour.

Her paintings do not reproduce a landscape observed at a single moment. They bring together extended observation, remembered scenery and images reconstructed through personal experience. Different times and places can therefore coexist within one composition.

Light operates as both a subject and a means of recording change. The same garden, sea or plant appears differently according to the hour and season. Kim’s interest in these shifts dates to her work of the 1970s, which depicted dawn entering a forest and sunlight reflected on the surface of a river.

The title combines the artist’s longstanding “Towards” series with the phrase “There Was Light.” “Towards” describes a gaze that moves beyond an immediate subject: from a seed to a tree, from the garden to the sea and from the horizon toward what lies beyond it.

The exhibition is arranged across three floors. New paintings of garden plants, Leo, the sea and sunsets occupy the first floor. The second floor expands in scale through seascapes, close views of palm leaves and fruit, and the monumental “The Days.”

In the basement, the colours of daylight give way to black, white and deep blue. Mountains, forests and waterways appear under moonlight and in the darkness before dawn, showing how familiar natural forms change according to light and time.

“TOWARDS: There Was Light” remains on view at Gallery Hyundai in Seoul through Oct. 18.

SayArt.net
Maria Kim sayart2022@gmail.com