Drops

Pearl Lam Galleries is pleased to announce its first solo exhibition by post-war Korean artist Kim Tschang-Yeul (b. 1929, Maengsan, Korea) at the Pedder Building. Kim is regarded as one of the most influential figures in Korea’s modern art history and is renowned for his “waterdrop” paintings. The exhibition will feature pieces from this signature series from the 1970s through to the present, which reflect his personal experiences, such as poverty, love, wars, and pain. Through the continued act of painting water drops, Kim is able to erase traumatic memories of the tragedy of the Korean War (1950–53).

The language Kim Tschang-Yeul uses in his “water drop” paintings combines the discourse of photorealism and abstract expressionism, placing the paintings in an ambiguous space between abstraction and reality. For Kim, water is the origin of all things, highlighting that nothing in our universe would exist without water. Through exploring water as an independent subject, Kim has brought the origin theory of Thales, the father of Western philosophy, to mind.