Cheerful Excitement and Mystery

Cheerful Excitemen Dialogue through art The world of work Through words And letters Opening the heart Can we express our Whole being ? Touching the inner reality With the trembling heart Faced with the white canvas Challenging the infinite possibility The marks of the concentrated blush The movement of blush one by one Living and moving Being blurred and spreading Color mixed with color How long we can bear And patiently wait Then, with our eyes And hearing… We intend to talk together Poem by Kim Jae-Im Translation by Masao Takenaka Mystery

The World of Cheerful Excitement and Mystery
by Ham Sae Jin

Kim Jae Im says that the Korean characteristics, cheerful excitement, rhythm and motion are the most important elements in her works. Trying to learn traditional mask dance or corolla dance and Korean drum, Kim makes efforts to steep herself in the worlds of Korean rhythm and cheerful excitement. The risen we feel the Korean rhythm from her brushwork is that she fills here canvases with overlapping touches of hand motion that are led by such cheerful excitement and that flow like water. When she moves her world that is filled with the rhythm of mysterious life gets to be opened. Thus, the Korean sentiment such cheerful excitement or delight in the most crucial element to form the world of Kim's art.
The questions are, where does the spirit of cheerful excitement come from and what is its nature and meaning? Does the cheerful excitement spring from inner mind without self-consciousness and effort? Kim's spirit of excitement that forms the base if her work is not gained naturally. In fact it is emanated as result of her persistent self-consciousness desire and effort and for her earnest desire, the spirit of excitement becomes as natural as breath for her.
When one leaves his or her mind neglected, one can only get gloomy and harsh sentiment such as disillusionment and loneliness. In the chaotic world of disillusion and antagonism, it is only natural to get such dark emotions in one's mind.
Kim's cheerful excitement is not something that is gained gratuitously but it is something that is aroused by the persistent longing and effort for purification through the burning, sweeping away and wiping off of the dark emotions which are deposited at the bottom of her mind. As Kim says, painting is the driving power for overcoming the difficulties in her life and her desire for overcoming the pressure of darkness changes her emotions into such a cheerful excitement. In her cheerful excitement, there is an earnest longing for rain, wind and sunshine which will wipe off "han (peculiar sentiment of the Korean such as sorrow)" for the Korean people including herself.
If the darkness disappear from the inside, our minds turns into an empty space like clear blue sky filled with only the heavenly light and wind. The cheerful excitement that tries to drive away the darkness result in silence and serenity. Free and emptiness in which no restraint or fear exist in the state of mind that Kim wants to attain through the spirit of cheerful excitement.
Only through the empty mind, one can experience and feel the heavenly mysterious light of life. As the titles of Kim's works Creation and Mystery suggest, her religious experience of mystery is another important element in her work. The experience of mysterious light enables one to realize that the life of human being is not finite but expands infinitely beyond life and death, and time and space.
Kim's works that visualize such experiences are different from those based on the Korean sentiment of cheerful excitement in that they convey the feeling of silence, blankness and mystery.
Kim states that in comparison with her heavy, dark and radical abstract expressionism works of the past, her recent works have serene quality with brighter colors and full of confidence. This kind of change is not due to her age, but rather due to her experience of mystery. The ultimate goal that Kim is pursuing through her work is to dissolve all the oppositions such as you and I, life and death and time and space, and to demonstrate that everything is one life.
What matters the most in Kim's work is the depth of her sensitivity that enables the viewer to feel her intention. It can be obtained only when she is faithful to her intention, accepting the great pain of creation. I hope that the fire of cheerful excitement she initiates will burn scars in the deep place of her mind, burn the darkness of the disunion and melt down walls of frozen severance.

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