Kim, Dae kwan : The Light on the Water (Das Licht auf dem Wasser)

The Light on the Water (Das Licht auf dem Wasser)

“His works in which two faces influence each other attract us, and vertical and horizontal lines in his works change, move, rotate and finally create an artistic space through diversified variations.”   - Professor Christine Triebsch, Burg Giebichenstein Hochschule für Kunst und Design Halle

During the last years I had been working in GERMANY, I had been fascinated by the transparency of glass and its visual effects that involve reflections of light as well as its perceptivity as a material for works of art. Colors painted on the glass are different from those on paper or canvas because they are transparent colors that could be perceived onto our naked eyes and also comfortable and delicate colors that people can recognize on Korean traditional costume called “Hanbok” rather than artificial colors of modern cities.

When two panes of glass are overlapped with each other, the multilateral movements of lines according to our viewpoints give us dynamism and sense of speed, and bring about the expanded chaotic space. These lines expressed on glass keep extending in different directions to indefiniteness. These lines let forth fundamental echoes of coldness and parallelism, and they are not only the simplest form among various possibilities of unlimited movements but also the expression of unknown time and space.

Glass works require a lot of patience and delicate efforts. My works of art are not the results of premature ideas and simple process, but the accumulations of my prolonged desire and painful studies about glass. The reason why I have been sticking to glass works despite the delicate process requiring unlimited carefulness is that I found out a unique aesthetic sphere that only glass can create after going through numerous failures. I want to say that even ordinary panes of glass could be used as a material for the contemporary art, and people could enjoy them as works of art without feeling uneasiness unlike when they look at some abstract works of modern art.

Repeated burnings of glasses in the kiln at the temperature of 620 degrees are aimed at achieving “the transparent tone and depth of colors” that only glass can show. Through this process, my works could contain their own originality and could be acknowledged as a pioneering attempt in South Korea as well as in the world.  

My exhibition, “The glass on the water” indicates touching moments when we happened to watch waves of a river and lights coming and breaking upon those waves. In other words, this exhibition can be said to show the moments of my true communication with nature. The natural physical movements of water from the upper river to the low will make viewers of this exhibition also flow into the streams expressed on the glass. It is right at this moment that viewers find themselves staying in the world of imagination.

I like walking along a river. When I watch the river, the wind ripples the surface and these ripples lead me into the world of past times and imaginations as well as the nostalgia of my hometown caused by loneliness of living in a foreign country. My works of “the light on the water” have been created through my life experiences either directly or indirectly. Rivers like waves shown in my works still flow in my hometown.

Kim, Dae kwan