Kim, Duk Ki – Under the Sun

The Wonders of Everyday Life
:On Dukki Kim’s Art

During more than ten years of his artist career, Dukki Kim has been working consistently with the same themes. From his early line drawings, wash drawings, and black and white sketch with subdued hues till the recent works covered with vivid colors, Kim has dealt with the subject of family and the scene of their daily life. In other words, the short history of his painting career shows a coherency in terms of the content while the major medium and technique have shifted from Indian ink to rich colors.

The titles of Kim’s recent paintings wrapped up with bright and healthy words such as , , , , prove his constant interest in the life of family and its surroundings. This repeats the theme and tone of his earlier works like , , , , , . There is no great change in the content of his paintings.

In his early wash paintings done in rice paper using conte and charcoal, he did not use bright colors but created cheerful scenes by covering them with light and cheerful energy. Even with these simple and abstract line drawings, he played with rich hues and imagination. This connects them with the color paintings in his later days in terms of the major content and atmosphere. It was since the mid-noughties that he has worked with bright colors.

There is the warmth and happiness in Kim’s painting. A father is watering the garden of flowers where a baby and a dog are playing. The mother is seen inside of the house watching them with a joyful look on her face through a curtained window. The scene is surrounded by trees clothed with green leaves and a variety of flowers which add a full spectrum of colors to the canvas. The richness of the color play covers up the scene of this happy family as a messenger of pleasure and joy of life. Art critic Song-rok Seo once called Kim “a painter who delivers the happiness.” I do agree with him.

The house is small. It is an ordinary house which fits for the family of three of four. However, the trees and flowers are extraordinarily colorful and create a dazzling view. Flowers are almost “blazing like fireworks,” to borrow Chung-hwan Go’s description. The canvas is lit up with flaring colors poured down on it as divine blessing. The strong and bright colors are piled up on it as the layers of snow. Then, they are organized into a mosaic with a density and richness.

As his earlier line drawings are filled with the blossoms of limitless imagination with its own rhythms beyond the narration, the recent works weaved with rich palette in a certain order announce the flame of life by the abundance of color. This is not about the narration. This is about the pulsatility of life. The momentality and eternity of the energy of life. This is a hymn of praise to life, the palpitating heart. The colors are not the means of decoration. They strive to live by themselves. They announce their own existence.

In a way, Dukki Kim’s paintings are like the illustrations of a fairy tale. They make the viewers happy without distinction of sex or age. However, this easy-to-see feeling we could have from his works does not mean that they are merely easy and shallow. Sometimes, the true beauty comes from the easiest approach to the most ordinary things. When it delivers the supreme happiness, the ultimate beauty lies in it. It seems like that Kim is not indulging in his own happiness. On the other hand, he seems to enjoy the emotional compensation of conveying the happiness to others.

Dukki’s paintings are open to everyone. People can feel and understand what is going on inside of his canvas which introduces the everyday scenery covered with house, family, village, and flower garden. However, with the sense of extreme joy and bright sunlight, this ordinary landscape evokes the imaginary dimension beyond the real. It contains the reality and the wish for the realization of a mindscape at the same time. Dukki Kim’s painting is the crystallization of freedom and imagination which is exclusively open for the dreamers who dream of happiness, the wonders of everyday life. It reminds us of the power of art which transfers the most ordinary life into the marvels.

Gwang-su Oh (Art Critic)