Taek Sang Kim Breathing light - Violet Green 23-1, 2023

Drawing on an observation of color in nature, over the last thirty years Taek Sang Kim has developed a distinct practice of creating luminous paintings through a process of repeatedly staining the canvas. Kim had observed the clarity and depth but also colorfulness of lakes in photographs of the US National Park Yellowstone. Subsequently, the artist longed to find a way to represent in painting such color, not as fixed entity but in light, as he has put it.

For his process, Kim has constructed flat framed basins on the floor in which the fabric is held and doused with diluted color. The color pigment dissolved in the watery solution settles as the water vaporizes. Edges and lines form by dissipating water, not the artist’s hand. Depending on wind, sun and temperature in the studio and also on the angle of the basins’ edges, the effects vary in each case. This process is repeated many times. Each exposure ads a unique color, until the work is finished, and the color lightly fixed with a medium.

The result is a painting of strata of color interwoven as the pigment of subsequent baths has settled in the fibers of the canvas. Because of this process, there is no over/under layering and therefore any notion of a linear, temporal application is replaced by the experience of near miraculous simultaneity and beauty.