김  보  민 Bo Min Kim

Artist Kim Bo-min starts from his existence and focuses on the connection between himself, others, and the self and the world in space. The artist's message is close to the proposition of existentialist philosophy that existence comes before essence, and the expression technique can be seen as a cityscape that reflects the lonely existence of modern people on a background made of colour planes. The artist wants to record the relationship between people completely, the emotions felt in that relationship, and the memories of those emotions on the canvas. The artist simplifies the space into geometric planes and arranges plants, animals, and objects around the human being depicted in a small size. The result is a direct reflection of the proportion of the size of a human walking between high-rise buildings in the city. The back view of the human being in the work approaches the lonely modern person enduring the repeated worries of daily life. The characters are walking and gazing somewhere. The artist's point of view is located behind the characters. At first glance, the artist's work resembles the walking person and gaze strangely, keywords of Giacometti's work. The figures seem to feel the loneliness and existence of humans, like Giacometti's sculptures, and the silent appearance while contemplating approaches as a cross-section of humans living a finite life. Walking means existing, and gaze also means being alive. To existentialists, humans are existence itself, and existing means being there. The artist minimally expresses the building in various shapes or simple lines, but the viewer perceives the form as the existence of space. The minimal image may be a byproduct of the artist's memory of space that remains in his faded memory, and the various colours may be an expression of the artist's sensibility that changes from moment to moment. The colour of the present feeling and emotion reminiscent of memories like black and white is applied. The work consists of sophisticated and warm colours and bold and straightforward spatial composition, and the detailed descriptions that fill it are in perfect harmony. The artist expresses the memories that come to mind with colours and shapes. The artist's new attempt at another form of work started from the image of a lonely human life, but it seems to be an attempt at color-field abstraction that omits humans, plants, and animals and depicts only space. By simplifying the anxious existence of humans into colour-field abstraction, he symbolizes his existence as an empty space through colours and shapes.

The artist believes deciding on a title is also part of the work and a question posed to the viewer. The short, poetic titles given to the work, such as "Some Things I Wish I Had Not Known," "The Morning That Comes Without Fail," and "Like Rain Falling Upside Down," allow us to feel the depth of thought and literary sense. The work's title acts as a seasoning that encourages viewers to imagine while looking at the work and induces curiosity. For existentialist philosophers, anxiety is an essential element that reveals existence. For Heidegger, anxiety is the experience of a human being disappearing from the entire being. A human being faces his death. For Heidegger, Dasein does not have an end in time but exists finitely. As a living being who experiences anxiety, I wonder what shapes and colours the artist will use in the future to prove his existence and what topics he will use to resonate with the viewers.