The Artist Kim Chong Hak

Gangneung Museum of Art Sorol presents The Artist Kim Chong Hak, a special exhibition celebrating the artistic vision of Kim Chong Hak, whose singular visual language has profoundly shaped the course of Korean contemporary art. Bringing together approximately 400 works on paper—most of them previously unseen archival materials—alongside rarely exhibited large-scale paintings and a reconstruction of the artist's studio, the exhibition offers a comprehensive exploration of Kim's creative practice.

Since relocating to Sokcho in 1979, Kim Chong Hak (b. 1937) has cultivated a profound dialogue with nature that has become the foundation of his artistic practice. Amid the landscapes of Mount Seorak and the East Sea, he discovered the vitality and ever-changing rhythms of the natural world, transforming these experiences into a distinctive visual language. Radiant color, fearless brushwork, and an intuitive grasp of the essence of his subjects have become the defining hallmarks of his work.

Gallery 1 traces the evolution of Kim Chong Hak's artistic language through nearly seven decades of works on paper. Beginning with nude drawings from 1957, the presentation includes a woodblock-printed calendar, prints created during his studies at the Institute of Print Research at Tokyo University of the Arts, paintings produced before his move to Sokcho, and experimental works made during his stay in the United States between 1978 and 1979. Together, these rarely seen works illuminate the formative stages and continual transformation of the artist's practice.

Gallery 2 explores the vitality of nature and the rhythms of creation through some of Kim's most powerful paintings. At its center is the monumental Pandemonium, where flowers, vegetation, and elemental forces surge across the canvas in an extraordinary display of energy. Complementing this work are major paintings from the Vine and Landscape series, which reveal the overwhelming vitality, movement, and transformative power inherent in the natural world.

Gallery 3 presents a reconstruction of Kim Chong Hak's studio in Sokcho. More than a recreation of a physical workspace, it offers insight into the environment where the artist's vision, daily practice, and creative process converged. Layers of paint accumulated on the floor, wildflowers and grasses gathered from the surrounding landscape, and paintings densely covering the walls reveal a life in which art and living were inseparable.

Through this exhibition, visitors are invited to experience the breadth of one painter's lifelong artistic journey. Extending beyond the representation of its subject, Kim Chong Hak's work embodies a deep attunement to the vitality of existence itself. The reconstructed studio further offers an intimate encounter with the traces of time, labor, and lived experience that lie behind each work, providing a deeper understanding of the artist's enduring creative spirit.