Kim, Jena H : The Last Stage

    ▲Frames in a Picture, 61 x 50.8cm, 2010,

The Last Stage
Jena H. Kim
April 27 ~ May 15, 2011
http://www.nextdoorgallery.co.kr/


Representational paintings that depict images on a flat surface using shapes and colors hold a shamanistic power to bring our memories to life, whether directly experienced or just perceived, and thus present a sense of fun to us. On the other hand, another pleasure that paintings allow us to experience is a kind of “material for thought.” Generally speaking, paintings are a composition of color, lines and planes on a flat ground; they can be of flowers, landscapes or figures that are representational and they can also be of dots, lines and planes that are non-representational. Geometric forms have been an important element in painting since the prehistoric age, long before letters were separated from the pictorial world and achieved their communicative function. Repeated lines and planes and their subsequent geometric forms can provide us food for thought in relation to occurrences and experiences repeatedly occurring in our daily lives.

The lines and planes in the paintings of Jena H. Kim construct audacious and solidified architectural forms. And yet, they are not a representation of realistic architecture but rather an abstract composition of a non-realistic vision with exaggerated and multiple perspectives; not a depiction of realistic space occupied by logical events and objects but a space that is entwined with the ambiguous time of incomplete memories. Kim’s paintings seem to be the place where different spaces with different meanings and events mingle with one another and by doing so create a new relationship. This is because memories involve specific events while at the same time we remember or register our repetitive surroundings in daily life as out-of-the-ordinary.

 A theatrical stage is a virtual space, deliberately designed by objectifying the real space where daily life and specific events occur. We experience joy together with the persona that an actor plays on the stage. We also experience a sense of catharsis relieving our dissatisfaction with the real world. Likewise, paintings, as a material of thought, play a similar role. Watching a movie or a play, we have to go through a little bit of an introduction and give ourselves time to fall into the story and finally enjoy it. Similarly, to take pleasure in paintings that are the material of thought requires practice and a certain amount of time with the help of our intuition, which, perhaps, leads to the last and final stage of pleasure and of visual perception.

With her adolescence and adulthood spent in the US, Jena H. Kim depicts contemporary urbanscapes in her pictorial world, but we can also recognize very Asian landscape elements in her work. The blend is doubtlessly attributed to her innate sensibility from her upbringing and childhood in Korea before she moved to a foreign country. The order and process of how each layer of paint is added onto the surface and how the painted planes interplay with the untouched wooden ground reveal Kim’s flow of thought in her study of spatial depth.


Written by Kim, Tae youn ( Director/ Next Door Gallery)

   ▲Hidden, 38.1 x 27.9cm, 2010

 *Jena H. Kim studied painting at Cooper Union School of Art and Science, New York and received her master degree from Yale School of Art, New Haven. The Last Stage opened on April 27 and runs through May 15, 2011. The process of her site-specific installation was open to viewers from April 23 in Next Door Gallery’s window gallery.