◈ lim, nam hun
Republic of Korea
Dankook University Fine art
SOLO Exhibition
11th Solo Invitation Exhibition 2021.09.30~2021.10.13
Chungmunkyu ART MUSEUM “Dances &Color”
(The logic of the EARL)
10th Solo Invitation Exhibition 2020.12.28~2021.1.11
Gallery marron “Dances &Color” (get drunk on me)
9th Solo Invitation Exhibition 2019. 11.17 ~ 2020.01.30
NAMSONG ART MUSEUM
“Dances &Color” (relation and a trail)
8th Solo Invitation Exhibition 2019. 10.25~11.12
Gallery marron “Dances &Color”
(relation And the language of everyday life)
7th Solo Invitation Exhibition 2018. 04.02~04.16
Gallery INNO “Dances &Color” (Present and woman)
6th Solo Invitation Exhibition 2017. 05.16~05.30
Gallery Zeinxeno “Dances &Color”
(The language of everyday )
5th Solo Invitation Exhibition 2017. 02.22~03.07
INSAART PLAZA Gallery “Dances &Color”
(A bowl of relation)
4th Solo Invitation Exhibition 2016. 11.02~11.30
Gallery A “Dances &Color”
(Everyday, about the language)
3th Solo Invitation Exhibition 2016. 04.18~04.30
Gallery Zeinxeno “Dances &Color”
(About the relationship)
2th Solo Invitation Exhibition
2015.11.09~2016.03.30
Gallery Seensee “Dances &Color” (About the passion)
1th Solo Exhibition 2014. 6/12/2014
Gallery is “the colors and dances”
2018 An essay on the recent work of Lim Nam-hun
– Regarding the 7th Exhibition.
The determination to the portrait through the human body
Hong Kyung Han (Art Critic)
The picture is a meaningful measure that documents human history along with letters (language) past or present.
In the formative aspect, it is a world that is full of the spirit of unconsciousness, and emotion dominated by consciousness rather than sight. From the social anthropological point of view, the picture has an inseparable relationship to human self, community, history, and culture.
Perhaps portrait, which can be described as a small field in art, is the same.
Art is a vessel that contains the generation and spirit based on the realistic aesthetic of reflection of reality.
Portraits also imply a trace of personal life, and social, historical footprint of a generation. Aesthetically, it is a true shadow that illuminates, and a tool for understanding the world through perception and experience in the interaction between the speaker and others.
However, while the self-portrait is in the relatively subjective area, the portrait is the area of the other. In general, the motive of expression and the approach itself are different. However,
It is not a solemn definition. The portrait also has the role of a world’s record as much as the self-portrait. In fact, it has more meaning than the realm of the subject and the object, as the honesty of the subject (whether realistic or abstract) and the inner mentality remains projected.
The important thing is that the visualization of ‘the truth of the object and projection of the inner psychological state’ is accompanied by an uneasy process.
For example, the artist, Lim Nam-hun observes his subject repeatedly before he paints. 2) As he considers the portrait (including the whole body and face), a sustained act containing time, spirit and life.
He is careful to ensure that he captures the inner mind of the subject on the canvas, by interviewing the subject severally.
Where people only portray the appearance of the subject as they are without placing too much effort.
His tenacity shines through because of his obsessive perspective of arts.
In other words, for someone, it is just painting a figure, but for him, he has forced his artistic attitude and creative motivation, which can not be separated from his artistic values even if it is just ‘a figure’.
Another reason for taking the difficult process is his commitment to full figure painting. He takes the hassle of that process to take a look at the world of psychological signs, agony, and bare desire.
Also, he tries hard to draw out the other side of the human body and soul.
It is also to sincerely skim through one’s own world, which is inside the visible form. The obsession with the full figure painting cannot be ignored for its stubborn procedure, but the artist strictly keeps his efforts to manifest the essence and spirit of the person, not just a visual imitation. 3)
His recent works are the result of this process.
From his 7th Exhibition (hosted by Inno Gallery), which closed last April, ‘Get Drunk # 29 ‘(2018) depicts a full figure of a woman with the red dress, winded by rough brush stroke. As in the title of the work, the figure is somewhat static, torsioned and somewhat drunk. However, ‘drunk’ here does not mean by alcohol but it refers to a state that her spirit is clouded and cannot keep her body steady by certain energy.
In other words, it refers to a situation when the person and nature becomes one, as her intoxication with a certain emotion and situation. We are able to understand that the artist attempted to present her professionalism and enthusiasm in the painting ‘Get Drunk
# 29 ‘.
Other ‘Get Drunk’ series, are within the same line. It is clearly portraying a human body, however, there is a gap between the usual idea of the human body as a beautiful object. There is no delicate portrayal of the eyes and ears, and no movement of fine lines. Instead, there is a ‘beauty’ that is created by the artist’s eyes. Rather than the ordinary ‘beauty’ that can be seen in the form, this beauty saturated in life has more weight. As Joseph Beuys 5) put the beauty of social and beauty of art on the same line, Lim Nam-hun also equates one kind of ‘beauty’ with one’s life trying hard in their place, and pioneers with their own faith.
In addition, many of his paintings are created in the area that can not be reached without the expanded scope of his thinking. It is not just an art as the image or the object generated by canvas and color, chunks of paint, but it is the representation of the subject’s consciousness. The work tries to prove it by carrying each different energies and its intangible elegant atmospheres.
In some works, despite the blunt flow of the depiction, the audience can feel the specific person’s sensitivity and delicacy, stubbornness, sorrow, and joy.
Particularly those of challenging postures, sharply gazing eyes, even it is painted with roughly rubbed painting knife, their mouth, where their statement can be presumed, emerges a strong power and vitality. And an unknown flow emerges from their movement. These elements become the background of setting the distance of the works of Lim Nam-hun from simple reproduction. Lim Nam-hun’s figure has the adversity and the curve that the object passed through, smeared like their diary.
As a result, in his painting, which is a small edition of personal life, the audiences skim through each of their own unconscious and confronts with introspection under the theme of love, sacrifice, peace, and hope.
This flow can be seen in many series 6) such as his face series, torso, nude, full-figure paintings.
There are common denominators among his works, a catalyst that discovers the ego of people who live in the world of symbols ahead of their reality, and the attempt to confront their honesty through a portrait by others and projection of self on others. 7) Finally, his full-figure painting series is a testimony to human identity through his methodology and his own sculpting ways to interpret the world.
1) Although like history says, paintings were often made upon a request of the purchaser. These portraits are far from self-portraits that include the artist’s intention.
2) Most of the time the artist paints the real person, but in the case of a deceased person, the artist refers to books and a variety of materials to feel that person’s life.
3) He painted my portrait recently, I also had to repeat the same procedures. His effort to meet his subject and talk for more than three hours, quickly drawing the result with a painting knife, and his effort to look out of the appearance and search the inner, is substituting the ‘depth reading’. The instantaneous stroke of the knife is to express less intuitively. Intense colors are signs that equate to the color of the subject, and the image is the color.
4) The spectators may be able to grasp the nature of the characters and their spirit depending on the expression of Lim Nam-hun, even though they do not exactly understand who that person is in the picture or what kind of job they have.
5) To Beuys, Art is something in everyday life or life itself. He believed that everyone has a creative aspect in his or her job, and every form of life is considered part of an artwork.
6) Lim Nam-hun is looking to move forward in the new direction of the whole body painting, after painting the face-torso-nude. This shows his willingness to adapt to change, his ability to draw a definite conclusion in a certain direction is highly salutary but it is unfortunate that he has not yet opted for the expansion of expression through the diversity of the medium. The intentions do not always correspond with the positive outcomes, however, attempts are the first step of creativity, and it is the conditions of creation that can not be neglected.
7) I mentioned in the previous review, but Lim Nam-hun’s interest in his face began in his 20s. He was studying physiognomy and epidemiology at the time and realized that the face of a person was derived from the environment and philosophy they grew up with. At the same time, he realized that the face of a person who contains the human history and the human emotion is the most beautiful history. Among them, the meaning of ‘eye’ was distinctive. Often, as the eye is considered to be the ‘window of the soul,’ the eye is a vessel of spirit and soul for him