cover image Tschang-Yeul Kim

Tschang-Yeul Kim

Ronny H. Cohen. Hudson Hills Press, $75 (215pp) ISBN 978-1-55595-084-2

With Zen-like immediacy, Korean artist Kim paints arresting pictures of water droplets, which achieve the stature of universal metaphor pointing to the insubstantiality of all things, the linkage of microcosm and macrocosm, the relation of figure to ground. Kim, who has lived in Paris since 1970, has also made nervy minimalist compositions spiked with archetypal symbolism, mysteriously beautiful Plexiglas constructions and gestural abstract oils reminiscent of Mark Rothko's color rectangles. His most recent pictures combine water drops with Chinese characters, stains or newspaper pages; Cohen ( Charles Ginnever ) views them as ``propositional'' paintings that address themes of rebirth, abstraction versus reality, and art as information. She relates much of Kim's work to the atrocities he witnessed as a soldier in the Korean War, and to his fusion of Taoist and Buddhist philosophy. (Feb.)