”Beyond Iridescence” Installation view. ©Gallery HyundaiGallery Hyundai presents “Beyond Iridescence,” a solo exhibition commemorating the 3rd anniversary of Kim Tschang-Yeul’s passing, through June 9, 2024.
Marking the artist’s fifteenth solo presentation with the gallery, “Beyond Iridescence” reflects on the ingenuity of Kim’s formal intuition, borrowing from his longstanding examination into the essence of visual art by way of his iconic “water droplets.” The exhibition introduces approximately thirty important works in remembrance of Kim’s groundbreaking artistic trajectory, ranging from his earliest water-drop paintings on linen from the early 1970s to those from his later years in the 2010s.
Upon selecting the water droplet motif to construct his distinctive visual language in 1972, Kim Tschang-Yeul had devoted his artistic career to exploring the interplay between the illusion of the water drops and the reality of the surface plane on which they were depicted. Beyond Radiance closely navigates the artist’s confrontation against this very idea of illusion, framed by his rigorous discipline informed by the repetitive depiction of water droplets.
Traversing a range of mediums such as linen, sand, newspaper, leaves, and paper or fabric containing Chinese characters, he blurred the boundaries between reality and illusion by placing the illusory yet meticulously depicted water droplets on these tangible surfaces. The upcoming exhibition traces the half-century history of Kim’s challenges and endeavors in defining his signature artistic vocabulary of the iconic water droplet, illustrating the trajectory of one of the leading figures in Korean contemporary art.
