이상원

Bio  

1981   Hongik University Graduate School of Western Painting

1969   Bachelor of Western Painting, Hongik University, Cheongju Normal School

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Selected Solo Exhibition

2024   Paintings as Drawings and Drawings as Paintings in KIM Hong Joo's Art, Sungkok Art Museum, Seoul, Korea

2015   Kukje Gallery, Seoul, Korea

2010   Kukje Gallery, Seoul, Korea,

2009   Arko Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea

2006   Daegu Culture and Art Center, Daegu, Korea

2005   Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea

2002   Kukje Gallery, Seoul, Korea

2001   Contemporary Art Center, Ilsan, Korea

               Kodo Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea

 

Awards

2010   22nd Lee Jung-seop Art Award

2006    4th Paradise Awards Culture and Arts Category

2005    The 6th Lee In-seong Art Award

1980    Cannes International Painting Festival Special Award 1

1978    Korean Art Awards Best Frontier Award

 

Career

Emeritus Professor, Department of Art Education, Mokwon University

1981.3~2010.8 Professor, Department of Art Education, Mokwon University

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​Works 

  Regarded as an artist who has been exploring the fundamental issues of painting, Hongjoo Kim paints mostly flowers and landscapes. However, his focus is not on what to paint, but how to paint. His paintings, which are completed by accumulating countless brushstrokes with acrylic paints along the grain of the canvas using a fine-tip pen, ask the meaning of 'drawing something with a brush'. 
  For this reason, up, down, left and right have no meaning in his paintings. There are also no titles. He is afraid that if he gives his paintings a specific title, people will stereotype them and accept them based on the title. He believes that anything that interferes with the process of appreciating a painting or limits its meaning, even the artist's intention, should be removed. He doesn't want people to keep trying to read symbols or meanings into the paintings and see them only as a language to convey a message. On the contrary, he wants people to see the paintings as visual objects rather than symbols that convey meaning, and that they should just relax and enjoy them because there is no theory or ideology behind his work.
  "I was interested in the compulsion that comes from working with ink. I don't care about the details, but rather what kind of base and how to use the paint to make it different from ordinary paintings. When I paint natural objects such as mountains and flowers, I only choose them because I like nature rather than mechanical forms." The flower paintings are the answer to the artist's long-standing question of what painting is. The artist, who has created works with a variety of materials and in a variety of ways, finally paints the most insignificant material, flowers, with the thinnest brush and the most embodied hand, with the thinnest brushstrokes. He strips away all elements and speaks through the act of drawing, the fundamental element of painting.

His paintings are a reflection of the artist's time spent cultivating and controlling himself. He practices the fundamental method of painting, 'drawing' with his body, not his head, and with time.