Kim Deok Han: Trace of Time
Beijing
2024.04.13 - 05.11
INTRODUCTION
Whitestone Gallery Beijing is pleased to announce that from 13 April - 11 May 2024, it will present "Trace of Time", a solo exhibition by Kim Deok Han (b.1981). This is the artist's first solo exhibition in the Beijing space, and the opening will be held on Saturday, 13 April 2024, from 3-5pm, with the artist himself in attendance. By piling up and removing time from the past, the artist tries to create an image that puts the past and the present on the "same plane".
Kim Deok Han has been working on the restoration of Buddha statues at temples for ten years. At a temple in Gyeongju, Korea, he discovered a 1,000-year-old Buddha statue that no one knew existed. When he peeled off the surface of the statue, he found that several layers of the statue had been stacked on top of each other like Russian nesting dolls to form a completely new statue and found inspiration for his work and began to think about "things you can't see if you don't look closely". Lacquer trees secrete resin to protect and heal their wounds. I hope that through the works made with this material, viewers will be able to reflect on their own lives and recognize their own hearts, and that the wounds in our lives will be healed.
“Piling up is something everyone can do, but revisiting those piles isn't easy.”
Emotions, memories, and experiences, everything about us naturally accumulates over the course of time. Our current mould is made up of accumulated past. I revisit my past self while changing the picture. By constantly expressing my past emotions or experiences into colors, I am also constantly reflecting on myself.
His work is usually scraped under pressure and therefore mainly on relatively hard materials such as wooden panels, stainless steel and aluminum. The wooden panels are first made, then covered with cotton or linen and the pores in the surface are filled in the traditional way, beginning with a repetitive process of stacking and stripping. In this way the work is gradually completed. By mixing various inorganic pigments into the “lacquer paint” at the same time, he creates his own unique colors, which represent memories, emotions and experiences.
The main series of works in this exhibition, OVERLAID SERIES No. 24-01, is inspired by the theme song ""First Step"" from the film Interstellar. The artist wishes to express in this exhibition the grandeur, tension and excitement of mankind's first step into the unknown universe. The film deals with the distortion of time and space, as well as the importance of connections and information between past and future, which is closely related to the theme of his work. Therefore, with the help of APO SOUND, a company that can convert sound into vision, he converted the music into colors and analyzed the data to adjust the distribution and perception of the colors. The artist responds to the tension of the musical rhythms and the corresponding contrast of colors by sanding, sometimes roughly, sometimes softly.
Inquiry
If you would like to receive a list of his works, please contact us using the enquiry form below.
문의
Inquiry
If you would like to receive a list of his works, please contact us using the enquiry form below.
문의
ABOUT
김덕한
김덕한
김덕한 (1981년생)은 도료인 옻칠을 주제로 작업한다. 칠예와 문화재보존관리학을 공부한 작가는 오랜 기간 옻칠을 체계적으로 공부했고, 동아시아 고유의 옻칠 전통과 방법론을 익힌 젊은 전문가다.
옻칠은 물성이 까다로운 기법과 더불어 깊은 색감을 보여주는 철저한 과정과 단계를 거쳐야만 하는 시간을 요하는 작업이다. 작가는 이러한 옻칠을 여러가지 색으로 덧씌워 반복적으로 벗겨내고, 각 층의 흔적만 남긴다. 이러한 노동적인 과정은 보통 6개월에서 12개월 걸린다. 왜냐하면 다른 것을 바르기 전에 각 색 층이 완전히 마를 때까지 시간과 인내가 필요하기 때문이다.
작가는 자신의 작업 과정이 시간과 공간의 기록을 만들어 낸다고 설명한다. 어느 한 겹의 흔적만 남기고 벗겨 냄으로써 그들의 누적된 존재감을 포착하고 과거의 개별적인 순간들을 한 폭의 그림의 평면으로 드러낸다. 작가는 이 과정을 ‘과거의 단편을 켜켜이 쌓아 올리고 다시 갈아내며 다층적인 시간을 들여다보는 작업, 예측할 수 없는 미로 같은 심연을 드러내는 시도’ 라고 설명한다.
고대의 옻칠 기법을 사용하는 것은 그의 그림이 수천 년 동안 보존될 것을 보장한다. 그가 사용하는 재료에 대한 작가의 명상적인 접근과 한국 전통적인 한복에서 영감을 받은 색상의 선택을, 은은하게 생각을 자극하는 인상적인 그림을 제작한다.
2024.04.13 - 05.11
BEIJING
Tel: +86 10 59920796
Opening Hours: 11:00 - 18:00
Closed: Sunday, Monday