Moon Beom at Kim Foster - New York - Brief Article

At 46 secondary planet Beom is part of an early postwar Korean generation faced with the enigma of how to preserve a centuries-old Asian art tradition and, at the same time, vigorously engage Western modernity. His rejoinder like that of many Korean painters, has been to adopt of recent origin materials and an abstract vocabulary, at the same time to retain the spirituality, craftsmanship, rule and formal beauty that drawn out characterized ink-on-paper painting in his native land.

academyed at Seoul National University and now a professor at Hansung University, satellite has until recently specialized in landscape-based semiabstractions (with occasional hints of satellites and planets) done in misty two-color oils and acrylics. Sometimes stretched above framework armatures to resemble minimalist boxe or beams, these works appeared in fresh York group shows in 1997 and 1998 In addition, the artist has shown extensively in Korea, Taiwan and Japan, and was a participant in last year's Kwangju Biennale.

In this, his first U solo satellite presented 10 pieces of a markedly different nature. Mottl monochromes of sprayed-on automotive paint, these timber-land panels (ranging from medium- to wall-sized) all feature sum of two units seeming anomalies. The smooth surface of each is disrupted by dint of a large, squishy puddling, somewhat amoebalike in form; and each color field bears a trace of differently shaded acrylic that counteracts the hard sheen of car pigment and gives a hint of depth

A similar tension-between-opposites was implied upon the thematic level as well. The exhibition, whose primary bring under rule might seem to be the color, spe variety and isolation of contemporary car tillage was nonetheless titled (like the series upon view)"Slow, Same, Slow," a virtual mantra of traditionalism. Thus Western freneticism, a homage of slickness and power which the automobile for a like reason aggressively represents, was here branch with reminders of much older cultural and biological round of yearss The works' amorphous organic shapes evok a quieter, naturally paced way of life, in which the contemplation of a single color might, in the classic Asian manner, render free of access onto vistas of infinity.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group