On "Voiceless Things" ● Happy is he... / Who hovers over life and effortlessly understands / The language of flowers and voiceless things!_Charles Baudelaire

At the end of a certain poem among the "The Flowers of Evil," through the ability to understand the "language of flowers and voice-less things," Charles Baudelaire discovers how to achieve the greatest possible "elevation," upwards and away from the daily miseries of human life. Clearly, the painter Heryun Kim has also become aware of the mysterious vitality transmitted by those things lacking speech and without voice.

Heryun Kim_watchman_oil on canvas_250×600cm_2008

From the darkness of her painting ground, wary and tender flowers, fruits and leaf-like vegetational form semerge. That these belong to nature is evident. In attempting to actually name the motifs, however, beholders are left flailing for words and are quickly forced to acknowledge having reached a limit. In LUCID (p.15), a gargantuan species of fruit with a delicate stem and lightly buckling skinny leaves threatens to thrust apart the large square format in which it resides from every side. At the same time, through the fine colorful modeling of the planes, the rotund fruit-form is fashioned much in the manner of Cezanne, moving from pastel violet tones through brownish orange passages and into creamy whites and pinks. Through the contrast created by the dark colored ground and white contours, the color-filled figure begins to vibrate with radiance and luminosity. The careful conception of plasticity and detail, however, insistently abstain from providing any indication as to which kind of fruit may be at hand. Whether apple, quince, or persimmon... this seems to be of no importance whatsoever.

Heryun Kim_kindhearted_fruits_oil on canvas_130×600cm_2008

In much the same way, the painted forms in KINDHEARTED FRUITS (p. 44) refuse any definitive allocation. In a giant panorama, six roundish pieces of fruit each occupy a narrow rectangular compartment, conforming to the ranks of a staggering and hovering row. The blackness of the image ground is even more prominenthere, as it now takes up two-thirds of the format. Heryun Kim applies the black paint onto the canvas in wide, confident, and agitated strokes, allowing it to oscillate across thickly spackled, now flatly, now mattly appearing texture zones. The black becomes a lively mass from which the objects emerge and proceed to unfold their singular presence. At times tentative and arduous, but then powerful and glaring, the fruits take on their forms within the brilliancy of color. The artist herself has already made references within this context to the biblical account of creation, according to which God created all life on Earth from out of the darkness. As reported in Genesis 1:2, "...the Earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters." The things themselves require the darkness of the ground in an existential way; it is the supporting foothold, without which they could not be.

Heryun Kim_eye of garden_oil on canvas_250×600cm_2008

The fruits appearing on Kim's canvases conceal a whole row of manifold associations. Likewise, the blackness surrounding them establishes a peculiar paradox: on the one hand, it facilitates the silky shimmering of the fruits; on the other, with its abundance of darkness, it weighs down heavily upon the imagination of the beholder. This principle was not at all unfamiliar to the painters of the Baroque era, with its "black" images, in which all things were materialized from out of the darkness. In a time plagued by long wars and terrible epidemics, in which the people of Europe were confronted with death on a daily basis, painters gave expression to the transience of life using an aggregation of motifs and symbols. The vanitas so aptly bore witness to its times through its altogether impetuous inclusion of skeletons, skulls and the passing of time as recorded by the running sand of the hourglass. Memento mori ? be mindful of your mortality ? was the slogan, deemed worthy as a moral directive for typification. It was much to that end that "lifeless" things were arranged in creating magnificent still lifes: slain animal cadavers were placed as hunting trophies alongside fruits and exquisite edibles placed directly upon stark white tablecloths or presented upon precious plates or costly china. From time to time, a hardly visible fly would serve to indicate the sensitive moment of transition between overripeness and putrefaction. Pictures such as these approach the connectedness between life and death in a strikingly literal manner. The objects depicted are reproduced faithfully and are allocated a definitive symbolic meaning.

Heryun Kim_goodbye, park_kyongni_oil on canvas_250×600cm_2008

Heryun Kim's pictures do not fail to bear a similar spectrum of coming and ceasing to be. It is, therefore, that much more extraordinary that they abdicate entirely from symbolic encoding. MOONGARDEN (p.13) depicts a strangely deformed fruit object which, with the roundness of its volume, strives to converge with the corners of its squared format. Whereas the blackness of the image ground is unremitting in its penetration of the beige-orange figure, the contour on the right dissolves diffusely into the darkness. This all lends a certain fragility to the fruit form, despite its impressive massiveness. Though immediately and absolutely present, the danger of sudden disappearance is imminent. In this case, the vanitas is not showcased in motifs but more begotten as the profound and ephemeral character of the image's objects themselves. Kim has not collected any "lifeless" figures but instead achieved visual entities which, from out of the blackness, timidly and quietly. give testimony to the chronicles of life and death.

Heryun Kim_crown for you_oil on canvas_250×600cm_2008

Along with fruits, it is above all flowers which Kim transforms into in tragic figurations upon her canvases. Here as well, we are confronted with truly "voiceless things," which satisfy Baudilaire's longing for silent communication to excess. The abundance of coming and ceasing to be is now manifested from out of the blackened ground, emerging in the specific structure of flowers and blossoms. These comprise a floral series produced in homage to the Korean writer Park Kyongni, who gained a great deal of notoriety thanks to her extensive family saga "Toji," and who, at old age, has recently passed away. The notions of death and mortality resonate strongly through this contextual note. Kim, however, strives toward everything other than any flat motif-based symbolism of floral grave dressing. In GOODBYE (PARK KYONGNI 08-14) (p. 27), the palm-like folding and furling leaves of a blossoming bud grow from among the wide horizontally and thickly applied black, their brilliancy unrolling from out of the tender yellow contours alone. From both of the upper corners and the lower right one, three light colored gestural elements attempt to hold the blossom inside the picture because it, without their support, would inevitably sink into the depths of the ominous blackness. Kim has painted a flower for Park Kyongni which spite-fully defies the hopelessness of fatal forgetfulness and perseveres in repeatedly blooming anew.

Heryun Kim_Mt.Halla_oil on canvas_194×259cm_2008

In a magical way, Heryun Kim has succeeded with her pictures in making "voiceless things" eloquent. Beholders of her work can therefore safely judge themselves to be truly happy, as they will have obtained the elevating faculty of being able to understand ? entirely in the manner that Baudelaire so desired in the last lines of his poem "Elevation." ■ Katrin Dillkofer

Vol.20080912f | 김혜련展 / Heryun Kim / 金惠蓮 / painting