"INVITE YOU" Woonjoong Gallery begins April, the season when spring flowers are in full bloom, with a special exhibition titled “Kim Chunhwan Exhibition,” which presents new works by artist Kim Chunhwan. Kim Chun-hwan is mainly based in Korea and France and is recognized for his unique work that is “difficult to criticize as being similar to anyone else.” Paper is used as the main material in his works. There are many artists who work with paper, but it is rare to find an artist who utilizes paper in a unique way that has never been seen before like Kim Chun-hwan. He has unwaveringly continued his paper work for over 30 years, creating a unique and clear world of art. The paper that Kim uses as material for his works is printed matter such as magazines and advertisements. Printed materials are used as a symbol of this information era, where an enormous amount of information is created, consumed, and disappears quickly. Various printed materials function as a representative medium of the information era, but most of them expire within a short period of time after their creation and are destined to be discarded or put away somewhere. Printed materials that have already lost their function or are on the verge of extinction are brought back to life through the artist’s hands. After majoring in fine arts at an art university in Korea and settling in Paris in 1995, we can say that his encounter with paper as a basis for his work was fateful. He himself says that his connection with paper began during his childhood in his father's wood mill. The textures and breaths he experienced while playing in piles of woodchips and sawdust during his childhood were embedded in his unconscious and were revived in Paris, a place unfamiliar to him. The feel of the sawdust passing through his fingers is transferred to the act of tearing or cutting a piece of paper and becomes a new work of art on his canvas. The dust created by the friction of tearing paper is a passage connecting time and space with the sawdust-blowing wood mill of his childhood. The fun play of his distant past becomes the basis of his work and the source of his aesthetics. His work resembles that of a farmer. The process of a farmer sowing seeds, sprouting them, growing seedlings, transplanting them to the field, fertilizing them, and pulling out weeds is almost identical to his work. He searches for and picks up appropriate prints, sorts them by color, uses various hand movements such as tearing, cutting, folding, and bunching to create the shapes he wants, then transfers them to the screen. For this artist, printed matter is the seed of his work, and the process of creating the desired shape with hand movements is no different from sprouting and growing seedlings. Just as a farmer transplants seedlings into the field, the artist transfers these shapes onto the screen, refines them, and grows them again. As the artist continues to work while feeling the paper directly with his fingertips, at some point he will transcend his consciousness or senses, and the screen will take on a certain shape without him even realizing it. The materials he used were very familiar, but the shapes created from familiar materials are often unfamiliar. The aesthetics created by the mixture of familiarity and unfamiliarity are surprisingly fresh. Sometimes they resemble the sea with huge waves rolling around, and sometimes they resemble grains swaying in the wind. There are clouds moving with the wind and strong rain showers on a summer day. There are fabrics rolled up and tightly displayed, and books comfortably stacked on bookshelf. The prints that were the seeds of his work were initially a complete screen, but in his work, all colors, letters, and shapes disappear and are reborn as completely different images. Depending on where you look, in what direction, and how far away you look, the shape changes constantly, which is another fun thing to see. His work takes various forms, including three-dimensional or installation. Another depth is visible in three-dimensional work. The artist uses hand movements to create various shapes from single sheets of printed paper, and then gathers them together to create a single lump of paper. He cuts off a part of this lump, exposing its cross section. Just as the wood mill in his memory cuts logs, the artist uses the saw blade of the lumber mill in his memory to cut the lumps of paper and reveal their cross sections. In this cross-section, the past perspective when the artist first crumples the print by hand, another specific past perspective when the lumps are cut off, and the present perspective as seen by the viewer are all mixed together. We may become aware of the meaninglessness of time through the existing cross-section of paper lumps. The wrinkles formed by the cut surfaces of the printed material that are revealed when it is cut with a cutting machine resemble the growth rings of a log. We wonder if the lump of paper the artist created symbolizes wood or logs, the origin of the material, and if his work is a process of returning the printed matter, the material of the work, back to its origin. Kim Chunhwan's work, which explores the dark side of a mass consumer society overflowing with information through paper work, is sometimes evaluated as an extension of nouveau realism. Nouveau Realism criticized consumerism and materialism, arguing for a return to nihilism and spiritual civilization, and this can also be seen in Kim Chunhwan's work. However, we should pay more attention to the fact that Kim's work does not stop at criticizing consumerism and materialism, but draws out the aesthetics of emptiness within it. He reveals the inner skin of materials through his thorough gaze and brings out the hidden nature of materials using existential techniques. Just as the saw blade of a wood mill cuts logs to reveal the secrets of growth, the wood mill in his childhood memory records modern society by cutting lumps of paper and using wrinkles resembling tree rings as language. We especially must not forget the way this artist approaches and uses color. He expresses color without paint or pigment. In his recent work, he extracts color by picking the same color from identical prints, that is, repeated prints. The unique properties of printing matter, which are completely different from the colors produced by existing pigments, appear on his screen. The unique colors of the printed pigment, the gloss of the surface, and the fibers revealed when torn and cut, all mix together to create faerie and alchemy colors. In this process, all the various texts and images in the magazine are dismantled into colors and are returned to the original colors they had before the first pigment was printed on paper. Due to his unique process of creating color without paint, he is sometimes called the color alchemist. His color alchemy is not limited to the physical dimension of using paper instead of paint or turning paper into paint. The artist believes that printed colored paper can create colors in reverse. Ironically, through already printed colored paper, he is trying to discover new colors that clearly exist in nature but that we have not been aware of through paints or works of art. The process of discovering new colors that no one has consciously used in print or work before is an experience that allows him to create and complete his own visual art. His studio is a smelter that creates new colors that no one has ever seen before, that exist in nature but that no one was aware of. Woonjoong Gallery’s “Kim Chunhwan Exhibition” displays important works from artist Kim Chunhwan’s past work process, focusing on his recently unpublished works. begins on a spring weekend when cherry blossoms are blooming, or more precisely, when the cherry blossoms are expected to be in full bloom. We cordially invite you to this wonderful exhibition. Woonjoong Gallery Derector | Kim Kyung Ae