The Mountain Beneath the Snow

Sim Eunlog (SimEunlog MetaLab Researcher and Art Critic)

The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country. The earth lay white under the night sky.

- Kawabata Yasunari, 『Snow Country』

Winter, oil on canvas, 200x780cm, 2020

Kim Chong Hak has numerous nicknames, and Seoraksan Hwaga (Seoraksan Mountain painter) is one of them. He lived at the foot of Seoraksan Mountain for 35 years, and the artist finds joy in painting the wildflowers, greenery, and landscapes he encountered there. He is also admired winterscapes, and the name Seoraksan (雪嶽山, great mountain of snowy peaks) is also based on the idea of winter. Dongguk Yeoji Seungnam (東國輿地勝覽, The Complete Conspectus of the Territory of the Eastern Country, 1481) describes the mountain gradually clothing itself in white, starting around Hangawi (a major mid-autumn harvest festival on the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar, or tr: around late September on the Western calendar), the snowline barely receding until Haji (Summer equinox, mid-June), earning it the seorak (snowy peak) prefix to san (mountain). JeungboMunheonBigo (增補文獻備考, Expanded Reference Compilation of Documents, an encyclopedia for culture and institutions published in 1908) also notes that snow persisted on the ridge, and the surface of the rocky mountain were also white like snow, hence the name seorak-san. Rich with the ambiance of snowy peaks, Kim Chong Hak’s Winter is the most unusual of his four season-themed quadrilogy. The earth lays pure under the sky in Winter (2020), pristine and sacred with negative space, elevated above any secular impurity. There is something hallowed about snowscapes, regardless of how many winters or how much snowfall one has witnessed. The artist recognized the blithe and the careless, untouched, and pure, a sublimity that he is no stranger to. Sacred and above secular impurity does not mean only happiness and peace. Unrelenting wind and heavy snow bend and break what grows out from the ground^[1]. The scarlet thorn brush would have been a harsh sight, but it is rather warm in these paintings. These are sights that are increasingly unfamiliar for city dwellers. Much like the first sentence of 『Snow Country』, we must now pass through a “long tunnel into the snow country” to appreciate this somnolent view. A snow country so white, its many underlying timbre captured by the masterful brush of Kim Chong Hak, is presented in his solo exhibition Winter, at Gallery 2.

Untitled, acrylic on canvas, 53x65.1cm, 2017

Winter, oil on canvas, 65.4x91cm, 2002

Kim’s forests of spring, summer, and autumn put the greens and life in the foreground. The sprouts, the gushing-forth of verdant energy, and the mesmerizing leaves of autumn obfuscate the mountain on which it is all happening. Kim’s forests of winter reveal this mountain, emerging forth from the tree, shedding their leaves and baring their branches. Although it is not part of his latest exhibition, Kim’s works that capture the full majestic character of Seoraksan Mountain are also in the winter. Winter also brings forth latent memories of Sinuiju - his hometown - and its visual similarities to the canvas. Untitled (2017) and Winter (2002) are mountainscapes with overlap in the front and back. The lines appear to be geometric abstracts - or abstractions from nature, but such sights are common on mountain paths during the winter. Kim always says that nature embodies both abstraction and figuration. His works may also seem to be mere abstraction and figuration to those who are unfamiliar with his paintings. Like linen over furniture, snow can obscure the sense of perspective or volume in mountains. Trees give some hint to the perspective, as they are drawn smaller in the distance. The snow frosted mountain ridge overlaps into a Y-shaped line^[2]. The foreground trees in Winter (2002) are painted with enough clarity of line and distinction of colors that the background is quickly understood to be a mountain. Further into the background, the trees shrink, and the cumulative effective is of clear volume and perspective. The background mountain is also overshadowed in blue, adding a sense of depth and distance. The trees along the ridge have been painted with detail and texture. Thanks to the clear winter sky, the trees shrugged off the snow, creating a Y-shaped line of crisp winter ambiance and branches. The letter Y has long been prototypal of divergent paths between what is sacred and secular, what is known and unknown, intellect and passion, and so on.

Vestige. Between presence and absence

 Untitled (2017), acrylic on canvas, 53x65.1cm (ea.)

Including the four paintings of Untitled (2017), Kim Chong Hak’s snowscapes are often without trace of any passage. They are pristine and pure. They are like the sacred Shangri-La of art. On a plaque in Kim’s Seoraksan Studio reads the two characters “無垢” (mugu, unspoiled) that he wrote himself.

[1, 2, 3, 4 from left to right]

[1]-[4] Untitled (2017), acrylic on canvas, 53x65.1cm (ea.)

Some of the artist's works are boldly footprinted like [1] Untitled (2017), but most are not so bold in their vestige. Oxymoronically, the footprints are a reminder of how white and how covered the mountain is. The gaze may be too busy following the larky rhythm of the trees in the foreground and the background. The footprints serve as focal points for the gaze to latch on and recognize the whiteness of it all. Lee Ufan's Dialogue series of paintings use vestiges of square brushes to create a resonant effect in the surrounding space.

Kim Chong Hak’s [2] Untitled (2017) footprints strut in at the far right of the screen, follow the stream, then trace off even before they cross the midline. Were these prints left by a duck? Untitled (2017) in fact, has a pair of ducks swimming leisurely. A duck may have waddled into the stream and sawm off screen, or into the stream on one side, and out the other. The mysteries of nature are boundless. A body with two different temperatures, the duck’s waddle^[3] hides a curious mystery. [3] Untitled (2017) shows more footprints, from the upper left edge of the panel moving and disappearing into the upper right edge of the panel. Judging from the linear gait, it could not be a person. It is also too large to be a bird. What animal could it be? [4] Untitled (2017) footprints are likely human, as they run parallel. Whoever or whatever they were, these were living creatures capable of leaving a trace. Just as dry and barren ground accept no footprints, these resonate as traces of life. This is the profusion of “traces”, resulting from the disruption of presence and interplay of presence and absence, as Derrida had argued. For Kim, this is also the trace boundary between the unspoiled mugu and the secularized compromise.

Reasons for choosing dull colors without sheen (色澤無施)

Untitled (2017), acrylic on canvas, 53x65.1cm

Moon (2012), acrylic on canvas, 181.7x291cm

Untitled (2017) is arguably the winter version of Moon (2012). Untitled (2017) is devoid of background, color, and concreteness. Only the rising aura towards the source of illumination remains. Neung Ho Kwan (凌壺觀, penname of literti painter Yi Insang, 1710-1760) once explained a similar choice in the verses (題畵, painting with poetry) accompanying his Guryongpok (九龍瀑, Nine Dragon Waterfall) painting, “I did not give it the sheen of color, not for I had dared to be lazy, but to gather my mind”^[4]. This association is by the artist’s well-documented fondness Neung Ho Kwan, having mentioned him frequently at interviews. Kim’s adoration for Neung Ho Kwang’s Seolsongdo (雪松圖, Painting of Pine Trees in Snow) appears in certain figurations of Kim’s plant-and-tree compositions.{ut}[refer to the first footnote of this text]. The emotional ambiance of Untitled (2017) is closer to Guryongpok (九龍瀑, Nine Dragon Waterfall) than to Seolsongdo (雪松圖, Painting of Pine Trees in Snow). In the way that fat was trimmed from Alberto Giacometti’s figures, Yi Insang and Kim Chonghak painted landscapes trimmed of all fat. By Yi’s expression, only the bare bones (骨) remain, and by Kim’s description only the essence of the energy (氣) remain. Kim’s works from spring, summer, and autumn focused on the cardinal and the color, and his works from winter present the underlying bones, conveying the dissimilar temperature between nature and culture (art).