EVANESCENCE

Jong-Sook Kim

Sep 09, 2021 – Oct 08, 2021

Crossing Art is pleased to present Evanescence, a solo exhibition of works by Korean artist Jong-Sook Kim, opening during New York Armory Arts Week 2021. The twelve works on view, created over a span of fifteen years, offer a novel interpretation of traditional Korean landscape painting realized not with ink and brush but with countless Swarovski crystals affixed to each canvas. Kim repurposes the manufactured, mass-produced medium to recreate spectacular scenes of nature’s splendor and grandeur, raising questions about the commodification of the natural world and the continued role of natural beauty in an increasingly man-made environment.

Kim’s crystalline paintings play with the expectations and conventions of traditional Korean landscape painting. A genre with styles and histories dating back centuries, landscape painting views the real or imagined world as filtered through the artist’s psyche and brought into being through her hand. In the case of Kim’s landscapes, each one of these views of the world consists of countless Swarovski crystals meticulously affixed to the canvas. Crystals play the role of both brush and ink, delineating landforms and atmosphere against the ground while also serving as the point of contact between artist and canvas.

Kim’s paintings are not static: they are activated by ambient or direct light, gleaming and shimmering in response to changes in their environment. The reflecting and refracting lights recall the glow of a city as seen from the air, a constellation of countless luminous points twinkling through the atmosphere and haze. The inherent peacefulness of the traditional landscape is called into question by the energy given off by the crystals that constitute each piece. Kim’s paintings synthesize traditional imagery of the natural world with the artificial materials she uses to realizes her vision.

Artist Bio

Jong-Sook Kim received her BFA, MFA and PhD from Hongik University in South Korea. Her works have been widely exhibited both nationally and worldwide, and a part of them is housed in the permanent collections at the Mogam Museum of Art, Korea National Museum of Contemporary Art and The Beijing Museum of Contemporary Art. The artist reinterprets traditional Korean ink-brush landscape paintings, giving it a modern vocabulary by incorporating Swarovski crystals into it. Her father, who ran a mother-of-pearl workshop, used traditional landscapes and motifs as prototypes for the objects he made. This early memory influenced her to create artworks of her own, onto which she incorporated the iridescence of Swarovski crystals, combining it with Korean tradition. She receives sponsorship from the headquarters of Swarovski in Austria, and has been featured in New York Times for Asia Week New York in 2017. Many luxury hotels and corporate offices in Beijing, Hong Kong, Seoul and New York collect her works. A 4.5m x 4m giant size work is collected by the Seoul Eastern District Prosecutor’s Office. As the Chinese art market paid attention to her career, she attended Art Xiamen 2021 and will also participate in the West Bund Art & Design Fair in Shanghai this year.