Deep or Shallow: Chinwook Kim
Sunmi Ham (Art Critic)
Heterotopic Landscapes
Chinwook Kim’s landscapes walk with memory. His works hover around landscape painting, but at first glance it is hard to grasp clear forms. Soon, though, mountains, sea, leaves, people, animals, and the moon quietly appear. He begins by placing selected memories from his life onto the canvas. As he works, unexpected clashes from the unconscious shape the image in new ways. The result is a whole made from inner traces of memory and physical traces of reality. Fragments from many parts of life come together and form a landscape of their own.
His paintings gather different times from different stages of his life and place them side by side. Several times overlap in one scene, opening the work to many readings. Like Michel Foucault’s idea of heterotopia, these spaces hold real memories, yet combine real elements in strange ways, creating an unreal effect.
In his long-running series, familiar shapes are hidden with care. At times, forms seem to dissolve and drift away. It is not easy to spot figures at first, but if you look slowly, you find people buried in the scene. They seem to hide inside the painting, as if playing a quiet game. Plants overlap with human outlines, recalling Arcimboldo. At other moments, the images resemble mimicry, like insects blending into their surroundings. These hidden figures feel like someone pulling a blanket over their head at night to escape a wave of anxiety.
His recent works focus more clearly on anxiety. They begin with specific moods and situations, gathering the vague fears that sit deep within everyone. By bringing together unclear and scattered experiences of anxiety, he leads viewers toward new awareness.
A Broad View of Anxiety
Earlier works filled the surface with dense lines. Small shifts in colour created a sense of space and distance, forming a complex landscape. In the exhibition 《Deep or Shallow》, however, the new works are strikingly simple. Instead of fine ink drawings on paper, he pours blue-tinted epoxy widely across the surface. Around the edges, forms appear in low relief made from kneaded paper, giving the works more depth and texture.
The viewpoint has also changed. Earlier paintings hid personal stories inside the image. The new works feel distant and reflective, like aerial views. It is as if we are looking down from the sky at a shared world, at a quiet point in the artist’s life.
Anxiety often comes from what has not yet happened. It grows from the unknown. In some works, dark seas or thick fog act as metaphors. The sea appears often in this exhibition. Its deep blue surface makes it impossible to know how deep it really is. It stands for emotions whose depth cannot be measured. Yet this uncertainty can also bring calm, since the source of fear remains unclear.
In other works, bright daylight fills the scene. Light spreads across the canvas, almost blinding in its whiteness. Yet somewhere within that brightness, the moon is trapped. Darkness and light exist together, like night hidden inside day. The works begin with anxiety, but they do not lock it inside darkness. Instead, they show strange meetings and an uncanny mood without sinking into despair.
Chinwook Kim’s spaces are always disguised. They are drawn from his real life, yet inside the painting they twist and mix, becoming heterotopic spaces that feel both real and unreal. Through this process, the works grow into new situations and new feelings. They reveal the hidden sides of life and the anxiety within it. In the end, they let us face anxiety as something that circles the edge of life, shallow or deep, and even allow a quiet sense of hope.