A steel fence reveals its solid structure through the hazy air, like a foggy dawn. The surface of the ground, hardened by years of being trampled, forms a faint path connecting the inside and outside of the fence—perhaps due to the weight of those who crossed it, or perhaps due to the bitter cold of winter. If you slowly move your gaze along the direction the path suggests, a dark world—where unknown things may await—gradually comes into view. Turning toward the threshold where dazzling light shines from within that darkness, you once again encounter another fence, guiding you into a sealed space shrouded in opaque grey air.

Nosik Lim speaks of the many forms of boundaries that exist in contemporary society, along with the conflicts, perceptions, and value judgments that emerge around them, all based on his personal experiences of witnessing artificial constructs and traces within nature.

For Lim, who studied traditional Korean painting, nature is more than a subject for his art—it is the very site of his early life. His childhood was spent by his father’s side, assisting with cattle farming and experiencing firsthand the incidents, both large and small, that unfolded on the ranch. The ranch, for Lim, was the next social space after his family—a miniature society within nature itself. As he grew old enough to make value judgments, the ranch naturally instilled in him an observational perspective on the world.

At the threshold where ordinary life becomes an object of observation and questioning, the society Lim experienced—like the ranch—is divided by fences into inside and outside spaces. Yet within these boundaries, clear judgments of good or bad, safety or danger, freedom or confinement, deviation or control cannot be made so easily. It is a space shrouded in ambiguity, a reality in which, like cattle that know the truth yet remain silent, one cannot speak openly in human language.

Despite the clear existence of value judgments viewed from the respective positions of nature and humans, within the two worlds divided by the fence, both sides continuously face challenges in defining right and wrong as they become accustomed to and adapt to each other.

View from the Inside 1, nearly nine meters in width, is both the centerpiece of this exhibition and a monumental work in which the artist confesses the moment he began to perceive the ranch as a small society that reflects reality. A few years ago, Lim witnessed a cow—unable to adapt to the ranch environment—barely managing to escape the structure designed to prevent livestock from fleeing, where a small electrical current flows. But, after facing the frozen world in the midst of a bitter winter, the cow ultimately had no choice but to return to the ranch on its own.

The ranch is both a violent space where forced breeding and milking occur, and a space where birth, nurturing, healing, and protection for the survival of life take place. The lives of cattle, who adapt to the system imposed by the ranch, dream of escaping this controlled society, but their lives are not so different from humans, who also cannot live apart from society. In this sense, Lim's View from the Inside goes beyond merely depicting the inside and outside created by the physical boundary of the fence. It conveys the inner psychological conflict that arises as immediate reality and the opposing ideals collide and overturn each other, as well as the artist’s view of the world through this process.

In Nosik Lim's landscapes, imbued with inner psychology, symbolic spaces that provoke reflection on the boundaries between inside and outside frequently appear. As indicated by their titles, works such as Milking Room and Feed Dispenser depict spaces and facilities divided according to the operations of the ranch. Unlike the Raised series (2014), where the artist specifically depicted the processes of milking and breeding, his recent works objectively observe and capture the spatial structures of the ranch where these events occur.

Although specific events are not explicitly described, the appearance of spaces partitioned for the control and management of livestock—where both the caretaker and the cared-for coexist—is dryly recorded within monochromatic canvases. Sometimes, his compositions reveal the division of space between inside and outside through the solid walls and steel fences. Other times, symbolic meaning is overlaid through the contrast between light and darkness.

In his paintings, light outwardly represents liberation or escape toward the sunlit, natural world, in stark contrast to the dark interior (Milking Room 3). Psychologically, however, it can also symbolize the ranch system—a structure that protects and safely manages life from the dangers of the wild (View from the Inside 1, center of the canvas). Conversely, darkness represents the controlled space where life forms, oppressed by humans, are forced to adapt for survival (Milking Room 1). Yet, darkness also signifies the space where life is sustained (Feed Dispenser) or the untamed, neglected wilderness beyond the cozy, managed ranch (View from the Inside 1, both sides of the canvas).

This dual meaning assigned to the inside and outside spaces is also revealed in Lim's notes on Boots(2014), where he objectively depicted the worn, sweat-soaked work boots covered in filth after hard labor:


“Boots protect our feet from external filth. That’s why we wear boots for dirty work. But when the boots come off after work, we find our feet drenched in sweat. Life seems to be much the same. We are aware of external dirt, but perhaps we fail to recognize the filth that accumulates from within.”
— From the artist's note on Boots(2014)

 
In this way, the spaces depicted by Lim possess relative meanings depending on one's perspective. Values once defined in absolute, polarized terms—like black and white—gradually lose their fixed meanings, dissolving into the flow of grey atmosphere rendered on his canvas. In Lim’s paintings, concepts such as freedom and confinement cannot be strictly defined by a singular, absolute standard.

Through compositions that capture the boundaries between inside and outside—spaces that simultaneously serve as both entrance and exit, interior and exterior—and through subtle gradations of achromatic tones where light illuminates yet never becomes dazzlingly bright like an ideal reality, and where darkness lingers without descending into utter blackness devoid of hope, Lim conveys these complex dualities.

Furthermore, the recent series titled Untitled focuses even more closely on artificial, architectural spaces within everyday scenery that evoke these ambiguous meanings and values. Through this, Lim’s artistic inquiry into space and its meanings extends beyond the specific circumstances of the ranch to a more universal realm.

Thus, although Lim Noshik’s paintings originate from highly personal experiences and memories of particular spaces, the boundaries he captures on canvas, with their delicate contrasts of light and shadow, awaken broader questions of meaning and value embedded within societal structures.
These questions continuously arise, dissipate, and clash within our minds, posing challenges:

Will we endure the pain that comes with escaping a confined reality?
Or will we choose the temporary comfort and stability that the painful yet familiar structures of reality offer?

At this moment, what fence—the boundary of one's own reality—is each of us facing?

References

• [비평] 잿빛 경계, 보류된 판단
  [Critique] Grey Boundaries, Withheld Judgments