SPELLING OUT A LANDSCAPE
In his canvases, Kim Jongku employs the same charcoal-like powder he uses for drawing on a paper. The canvases, being two dimensional, resemble the look of Mobile Landscape’s calligraphic floor composition; like it, the canvases are at first composed on the floor. Kim completed three large canvases during his two-week stay in Kansas; ostensibly these form a triptych, though all three do not share the same wall in this exhibition. For these and similar pieces, Kim draws a line of calligraphy in the canvases’ upper region. Then, a canvas may be gently raised to cause a portion of the powder to cascade downward as if the writing casts a shadow. In order to have paint, both a pigment and binder are needed. Kim’s steel powder “pigment” is bound to the canvas by flooding the areas thick with powder drawing with diluted polymer glue while the canvas is laid flat. Later, the tableau is propped vertically against a wall. Through use of watery glue applied with a spray bottle and/or addition of more powder, the “shadow” of the text is extended downward with gravity’s help. Like rust stains on outdoor walls created through time and weather, this method evokes the sadness of great weeping or the washing away of spilled blood long since bright red. With wetting, once think and black dust turns rich and varied in color, and a crust coagulates the masses exaggerating the texture. We weren’t sure if the artist intended for viewers to walk through the filings on the floor so we just stood and admired...and watched our feet being projected on the screen above.