Tschang-Yeul Kim, the artist known for his ‘water drop painting’ has been developing his ‘water drops’ for 30 years. In the 1950’s and 60’s, Tschang-Yeul Kim led the Korean ‘Informel’ movement with Chang-sup Chung and Seo-Bo Park and in the 60’s, Kim went to Paris where he started the new chapter of his artistic career. After he settled in Paris, the artist started to develop opaque liquid in his ‘Recurrence’ series in the early 70’s. Gradually, Tschang-Yeul Kim transformed the liquid into transparent, spherical shape, and finally it culminated in his ‘water drops’ after mid 70’s.
His ‘water drop paintings’ went through a ‘searching period’ when the artist was searching for his formative language in the 70’s and early 80’s, and after mid 80’s, his work focuses on finding formative harmony between the thousand Chinese character text and water drops – the period when formativeness of space in Asian painting was emphasized-. After the 90’s, Tschang-Yeul Kim’s painting continues to forge ahead into a new period, in which various installations, stained space and negative characters were created after writing the characters with latex and removing them. This article focuses on several aspects of formativeness in Tschang-Yeul Kim’s paintings from the 90’s to present.
