“Filling, Emptying” – “To Be Filled, To Be Emptied” – “Fullness, Emptiness”

For the past three decades, Kim Ho Deuk (b. 1950) has engaged in various experiments with traditional ink and paper, the model materials of Oriental painting, and then with expanded materials and methodologies of muslin and canvas. This exhibition brings together the art Kim has produced so far, and also presents the works in which the artist compactly demonstrates his process of “filling and emptying”, which consistently runs throughout his oeuvre. Based on the subjects of contemplations, action, or space and time that he had addressed in previous solo exhibitions such as “wave of mind, awakening moment”, “awakening moment–between”, and “layered space, between”, he presents an expanded logic of the real and the illusion through the paradox of “fullness” and “emptiness”. In particular, most of the new works presented in the show are the product of having studied the unique space of Paradise ZIP. The works embrace the space’s conflicting characters of “simplicity” expressed in white and the “complexity” of having maintained the structure of a house, along with the artist’s characteristic play with contrary concepts, such as the beauty of emptiness and the fullness of ink, black and white, yin and yang. The works present various meanings to the initial notions of fullness and emptiness, constructing yet a different harmony.

“At a certain point during the process of filling out, a full spot seems empty, and a spot that had been empty suddenly seems as if a protruding entity. Such paradoxical situations arise in many of my works. Also in our lives, we experience and face many circumstances in which we feel more empty the more we fill out, and more full as we empty out.”