gallery joeun

Concealed by darkness, the unknown only reveals its true face to the world through light.
In 18th century Europe, an intellectual movement originated in France called the Enlightenment. In French, the Enlightenment is Les Lumières, meaning ‘the light’. In an era where superstition prevailed, Enlightenment philosophers shone the light of thought and reason on the unknown presences and natural phenomena concealed in the realm of mystery and revealed their true nature to the world.

In observing and contemplating his object, the artist’s eye discovers the unseen and finds form even in what scientists concluded had no form. In this sense, artists are a light, that, much like contemporary Enlightenment philosophers, illuminates the new. Through the artists’ keen eyes and acute thinking, what lies undiscovered or unimagined comes to life in new forms.

In the past, there were Eastern landscape painters who formed air out of the blank space in their ink paintings and impressionist painters who created forms of air and light by breaking light down into various colors and injecting it into their subject. Like Paul Klee, who said, “I do not show what is visible but make the invisible visible”, artists continue efforts to create form the formless.

The artist Jang Kwang-Bum is one of them, constantly trying to transfer the invisible elements of nature into form ever since he discovered the form of time in the corner of the old, torn wall of the École des Beaux-Arts during his studies in Paris.
The build-up of the layers of paint in Jang Kwang-Bum’s work indicates the accumulation of time. Between each layer of paint, the artist inserts layers of white. Just as white symbolizes light in the color spectrum of paint, the white layer in Jang Kwang-Bum’s oeuvre act as light, revealing its texture and form to the world. When the layers of paint have accumulated and dried, he scrapes off parts to reveal the underlying layers, that is, layers of time that have built up over the years. The form of the strata of various colors that are exposed on the cut surface is revealed more clearly, thanks to the white layers inserted between them. In this way, the two lights – being the artist Jang Kwang-Bum’s eyes and the color white – give ‘time’ a form and bring it into the visible world.

Explaining his ‘Mountain’ series, the artist clarifies that the image of the mountain is not an existing mountain, but the embodiment of the accumulation of time, in the form of a rising mountain. Contemplation on the form of time has given rise to a mounting abstract form. The images of mountains, water, and fire in the paintings express fluid shapes that minutely change with the passage of time, the form of time flowing and moving within the subject.

Realizing that the passage of time offers a visual sense of rhythm within natural elements, the artist crafted his own method to give form to those subtle changes, different from the existing techniques in two-dimensional painting.
In some ways, his method might seem simple, layering paint to pare it down again in the manner of a sculptor. However, the technique of creating a sense of rhythm through tension and the slight changes coming from the subtle differences in the thickness of the grain was born out of the artist’s particular sensibility. When viewed from afar, the white and monochromatic layers appear to be alternately accumulated. However, up close, viewers find numerous unbroken lines with varying depths and breadths. Here one can learn that for the artist, time is never a static object; it breathes a sense of movement into all living things.

In this way, Jang Kwang-Bum’s work eliminates the limitations of two-dimensional painting, using the paint's runny material and producing a delicate three-dimensional effect. His work contains materiality that media art cannot capture; it makes the object it is trying to represent really exist. Ironically, by letting us touch the form of non-existent time in an era overflowing with media art that blurs the boundaries between virtuality and real existence, his work makes us ponder the question of materiality and existence.

With an innate sensibility, the artist explores the world and seems capable of distinguishing the brightness and saturation of colors more finely than the average person. The world he sees with his eyes and heart is too detailed and delicate to be expressed in words; this might be why he transfers his thoughts and observations into visual works. For Jang Kwang-Bum, plastic arts is the most precise and appropriate tool for the expression of self and communication with the world.
Through the artist’s sensitivity and unique creative technique, the forms and shapes he has discovered – forms unknown and shapes not existing in nature – keep being revealed to the world.
Dr. Kim Ju-Young, Ph.D. in Visual Arts, University of Paris I