Kim Deok Han, the South Korean contemporary artist who has put on display “Overlaid Series” paintings at the ongoing India Art Fair 2019 in New Delhi is quite buoyant about emerging Indian art potential.
Gallery Palais de Seoul that is participating in India Art fair 2019 with the support of Korean Cultural Centre India, has introduced Kim Deok Han here.
A contemporary artist from Seoul who is touring India for the first time has come up with Overlaid Series of ‘lacquer’ paintings in which he has used black colour numbered 81, coinciding well with his year of birth, 1981. The lacquer is Oriental traditional paint which is well preserved for thousands of years. The pepper red used in this painting is number 96.
In an informal interview with the Asian Community News (ACN) Network on the opening day of the India Art Fair 2019, Kim Deok Han commented on his maiden India experience, and said, “India is full of soulful people and the country has great potential for art. It’s a growing art market.”
“The art lovers came up in good number enquiring about my paintings. I have used not-so-vibrant colours, that go well with the ones used in traditional Korean attires like Hanbok, the dress from the Joseon dynasty of Korea,” said Kim adding that the visitors also showed interest in the lacquer which is organic in nature and completely harmless to the body.
Though Kim preferred not to disclose the price of his paintings individually, he indicated that the price of those paintings ranged between the US $ 2000 and 8000.
Kim comes from the family of artists and has a number of relatives already into the world of art and paintings.
According to Kim his paintings took about 6 to 12 months to complete as these required colours to dry up before another layer of colour is applied, therefore required a lot of patience. His paintings required repeated overlaying of colours, and frequent rubbing to produce the desired impression of the colours so used in the paintings.
He constructs his own world with the Korean traditional techniques and the Oriental thoughts only.
He does not end up with covering the stacked past, but peels out them again, revealing both past and present on the same canvas. The Image overlaid through the repeated brush strokes would imply the record of time and space, while the past traces would be shown up like ‘an Oriental line.
Artist Kim Deok Han who has used the lacquer for a decade attempts to record and stuff Korean identity on his canvas with the spirit of craftsmanship.
The artist’s ideology that the current look arises from the overlapped record of the past would be restored in the cycle of the universe continuing to appear and disappear, and thus, the value of his existence would be recovered.
The overlaid canvas would endure the period of perseverance grinding incessantly to be projected onto the splendor of the canvas. The artist witnesses himself being projected too, on the canvas to pray for the recovery of his value.
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