Come, Come Closer

Having started and developed his career as an artist in the midst of the homogeneous domination of Korean Monochrome over the Korean art scene of the mid-1970s, KIM Yong-ik (1947- ) has stood opposed to the fetishization of art in the modernistic space that holds itself aloof from real life and to institutionalized conventions. His entire oeuvre, which ranges from the fabric works of the 1970s and 1980s to the recent works of polka dots, shows a “critical modernistic” attitude which borders between modernism and postmodernism, as it can be characterized by the deliberate undermining of the validity of the “certified image power” of progressive modernism. Come, Come Closer (1990-2003) is one of Kim’s “ecology-oriented” works whose principal focus is placed on the evolving process of art. This work consists of a number of minimalistic two-dimensional components whose subcomponents are drawings, letters, and stain-like images. It clearly unveils the artist’s critical antagonism towards progressive modernism as it contains what were not tolerated within the modernistic grids: such bodily residues as sweat, tears, and emotional turmoils and such impurities as fungi and smears as the vestiges of natural processes and time.