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KWAN-YOUNG KIM

김관영 金官泳

In the same time and space as us, who live days by gaining memories, there also are people who lose their memories. Even the person who has lost most of what we call memory unconsciously heads somewhere, eye contact with somebody, and touches something. Watching a dearest person losing memory, artist Kim Kwan Young dreamed of the hope of bringing back those memories by giving the shape to pieces of unconsciousness.  Consciousness and unconsciousness interact with each other and produce numerous pieces of memory that are joined and grouped together, or scattered in smaller pieces to idealize the memory and overlay it with others, or sometimes cover it with opaque shrouds. No one’s memory is perfect. In this age, when even AI(Artificial Intelligence) expands its own memory, such imperfection distinguishes humans from machines and it leaves arts as human territory.  Kim painted such unconscious actin onto the canvas he faces every day. After hours of considering, one dot is stamped and a huge area is painted in just a few seconds, vortex pilled up by meticulous calculations, and one side covers or reveals the other. these unconsciousness codes, which are abstractly translated without the involvement of any specific forms, remind viewers of some common emotions and stimulate memories in their respective depths.  There now is something next to Kim who has been working on a series of tasks over the past years that adds memory at an uncountable rate instead of someone who has been losing his or her memory. These changes in the environment change Kim’s unconsciousness, and such unconsciousness is reflected in both the color and energy of the brush touch of his work.  For Kim Kwan Young, Painting is the way of finding lost memories in unconsciousness and identifying his other-self. We hope viewers have some time to recall their lost memories through Kim’s works.

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