brilliant 30: Yongchul Kim

Are forests necessary and valuable to our existence? People are entitled to their own opinions, but I doubt anyone would question the idea that trees play a crucial role in our lives. According to a set of statistics from the Korean Forestry Service in 2010, the forests' contribution to public benefit has been estimated at around 109.007 trillion Korean Won in value. Value is assessed based on the forests' cultivation and management, clean air, and their importance as a refuge for wildlife and nature reserve. This astounding figure is almost beyond comprehension. But this estimate alone cannot prove the full value of the forest.
Existentialist philosophers call Western metaphysics the history of existential oblivion. How do we define existential oblivion? In reality, we tend to make empirical interpretations of objects and our environment. Take streams in the forest, for example; a small body of water makes pleasant gurgling sounds. At the same time, a refreshing temperature around it also cools the body in the heat. We enjoy the changing colors of foliage from beneath the shade of a tree. Likewise, when we drink from a cup of water or when we hammer a nail into a wall, we rarely analyze the temperature of the water or the weight of the equipment.

We act upon empirical understanding of the object’s existence. However, present-day mankind tends to objectify the results of human activity and converts any and all things into monetary value. As a result, mankind is deprived of all existential experience; what is left is the shell of existence as defined by capital.
In his paintings, artist Yongchul Kim portrays his subjective experience of Jeombongsan Mountain in Gangwon-do Province, Korea. He discovers the law of survival among living organisms and posits these laws as the source of the ideals and existential experience of human beings. But here, we find that present-day natural science breaks apart the subject-object relationship between mankind and the cosmos. Mankind is no longer a subject of the world, and is no longer entirely in power over nature. What is illustrated in Kim’s works - the relationships among trees as part of the ecosystem, green grass growing in the woodlands and the movement of living things - articulates nature’s laws of survival; laws we have long forgotten. Through Kim’s contemporary art, unfamiliar scenes from nature are reproduced on canvas. The work aletheia reveals the hidden truths of existence in modern-day natural science.