▲ Artist Kim Hyun-ai

I paint both animate and inanimate objects that repeat piling up and worn out. I apply paint layer upon layer and I sometimes remove them again and again. This process is like part of my life. Like we have ups and downs so do my works which are gentle sometimes and tough some other times. In this respect, all colors for me are protagonists. - Artist's note -

Many people say that they feel safe and ease watching Kim's works. Some say her works have some kind of healing power to soul and some other say her works give like freedom through beautiful colors. Her works <My Flowers>, <Fold> and <Stratum> deliver her common themes on birth and death of all things in the world and she lays her philosophy that they are the same things eventually. 

She values human's love of things more than the existence and nonexistence of things as all things in the world are changing and fading. Her works, in this regard, is a study and a record of these changing and fading processes. And this might be the reason that images in her works appear rather obscure. 

<Stratum No.12>, for example, represents changes of man's life and of stratum. She used dripping method to express the textures of the stratum and the piling, cracking and breaking of the textures are symbols of joy, sorrow and pain of man.

"All things have particles and energy. We are made of particles and energy and I think everything is similar more or less. So the soils, flowers and grasses all go away like the Indian song <Thousands of Wind>. A matter for me is the result of piling things up and up and up through crashes and worn out. When the matter disappears, it is not the end as it disperses into wind, sea and stratum. I can say that the earth itself is but us. So I want to give all things on earth my warm comradeship" says Kim.

"Piling of time is a property of the planet earth and humans, and this sedimentation is splendid. This is the reason I paint colors layer upon layer and I expand the application to collage, matiere, dripping and scratcher. A work takes several month and another work takes within a month depending on how successful the application develops."

Interestingly, Kim majored in physics but her love of art always has been greater than untangling secrets of physics in a lab. So she had to learn and improve her skills by joining a club or from private lessons of professional artists. 

She made her presence in the field by winning prizes at the Mokwoohoe Contest, and the PCAF hosted by the Korea Seohwa Association. Following the group exhibition at the 57th Gallery in Seoul, she held her long time wanted solo exhibition from November 25 to December 2 this year under the title <Existence and Extinction : Being or Not Being on the Earth>. She displayed 52 of her works and most of them were sold. Some of her other works were also sold at the Andnew Gallery site. 

"I believe life on earth is beautiful and I wish to make works that corresponds with the belief."

▲ 나의 꽃 My flowers NO.5 53×45.5cm oil on canvas