LIM HYUN LAK

The problem for an exhibition planner was “how I can introduce and interpret his work.” The artist has gone through several important changes in his life. Lim Hyunlak's world is already complete, and is full and sometimes bursting like an appetizing and rich pomegranate in the late autumn. Thus, I thought about this exhibition in line with the change in his attitude on viewing life from a different perspective. If the Creator created the heavens and the earth, I imagine it to be as a thinly expanding universe, like the Saturn Belt or a horizontal composition that illuminates the world as the sun rises from the east sea. Of course, there is a work called <Draw the Pellestrina>, which was created by placing a large cloth on a coastal road, and Lim Hyunlak walking with an ink-stained broom during the Venice Biennale in 2015. However, his works were mostly a series of ink paintings in the form of falling from the top to the bottom. Since the ancient times, the concept of the top and the bottom represents class discrimination like a pyramid. At the same time, it follows secular physical laws like gravity. However, the concept of a horizontal line means equality of creatures in front of God, as in Christian culture, suggesting that it can be interpreted transcendentally by obscuring the preceding relations between space and time, based on Newton's law of “free fall.” Thus, I proposed to Lim Hyunlak to install a horizontal piece of art that fully utilizes the long form of the museum's exhibition space. Such change of perspective requires a fundamental transformation in the form of the work. The artist is already familiar with these things. He has been expanding his territory by making installations of Korean traditional paintings that were limited to the plane, and then adding his performances and images. At a glance, he could be seen as a translator who combines Korean painting with various Western art trends. However, he takes ink to an ambiguous place between 2D and 3D by changing his attitude and form. German photographer Gerhard Richter explores the boundary between photography and painting, but he also focuses on the property of the material rather than the effect of ink, which has been perceived as 2D, and then interprets it as an installation art, neither 2D nor 3D. Therefore, the change in the form and attitude for him is his pride, insisting on ink throughout, and the reason for his existence as an artist.

The title of the exhibition that will be held at the Osan Museum of Art was <One-Second Ink Painting - Soar into the Space>. As you can see, he still insists on “one-second ink painting.” In the expression, “Soar into the Space,” “space” could mean the white space of the background for the ink, but it could also mean the “light” that illuminates the world, or “oneself” that reveals a transcendental attitude toward life. “Flying light” or “soaring self” shows the new attitude and the mental posture toward the life of the artist, who is at a turning point.

- Yeon Kyuseok (Chief Curator / Museum of contemporary Art Busan)