Contemporary Korean Artist Series: Kim Bongtae
May.25,2016 - Jul.10,2016
MMCA Gwacheon Gallery 2, Main Hall
The Korean Contemporary Artist Series intends to establish Korean art history by observing artworks of major senior artists. This particular exhibition is a retrospective of Kim Bongtae (b. 1937) and the fourth instalment of the series in the area of painting. Primary colors and geometric forms are inherently distinctive features of Kim Bongtae's works.
Kim Bongtae participated in the Paris Biennale of 1963, and in the same year, he was invited to the Symposium in New York that was organised by the International Plastic Art Association. It was then that he started studying in L.A and finished his master course there. From 1963 to 1985, the artist developed a variety of works whilst engaging in many different activities. He was active as a public figure, taking the positions of the chairman of the Korean Artists’ Association of Southern California and the Dean of the art department of South Baylor University. He also participated in many contest exhibitions and his works were widely presented. After shuttling back and forth from Korea as a visiting scholar, he finally settled down in Korea as a professor in 1986.
Aside from his early abstract expressionistic works, this exhibition features a range of his series titled Shadow, Nonorientable, Window, Dancing Box and Accumulation, which demonstrate the development of his geometric compositions. The geometric forms and three-dimensionality in his painting change into the color-plane of a shaped canvas, and to works that use light-penetrating material. This kind of material becomes an expansion of a sense of space in which one can observe its entire process. His artistic pursuit focuses on colors, forms and lines interplaying with two-dimensionality and three-dimensionality, which Kim Bongtae understands as the essence of plastic art. Kim Bongtae's oeuvre of works shows that he is the one artist to relentlessly make works through which his continuous artistic achievements and sincere artistic spirit can be recognized. Additionally, numerous drawings that have never been shown to the public before are exhibited to display the reality of his working process.
Kim Bongtae's works remain unique in the Korean art world. We can see that his works reflect his intense artistic consciousness of his own struggles as an artist who holds onto his own artistic language for his ultimate freedom, not jumping on the predominant artistic current. Through paintings that are like sculptures, sculptures that are like paintings, and works that play variation on the flat surface and the third dimension, we are able to look into rich strata of Korean art and appreciate the essence of plastic art.
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