Hong Joo Kim Untitled, 2020

This untitled work is characteristic of Hong Joo Kim's practice which since 2010 has increasingly foregrounded tactility. While the artist employed small brushes even in his early surrealist-inspired figurative works from the 1970s, the focus of using this technique gained a new significance. From around 2010, Hong Joo Kim became deeply immersed in the sensory experience of using a brush with a few bristles, specifically focusing on conveying the tactile sensation that arises when the brush touches the surface of the canvas. As a result, the importance of the representational form on the canvas diminished, and the works became more abstract. Fragmentary motifs emerged that hover between representation and abstraction, even as the ambiguity of form is not one of the artist's main concerns. His ongoing work in conveying the tactile sensation through his works, which is experienced physically while painting, continues to be the major theme.