Korean artist-MMCA exhibition
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| ▲ Kim Tschang-yeul's paintings are on display at the Seoul branch of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) on Aug. 21, 2025, in this photo provided by the MMCA. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap) |
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| ▲ Kim Tschang-yeul's "Rite" (1966) is seen in this image provided by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap) |
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| ▲ South Korean artist Kim Tschang-yeul looks around the Kim Tschang-yeul Museum on Sept. 24, 2016. (Yonhap) |
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| ▲ A visitor looks at Kim Tschang-yeul's painting at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul on Aug. 21, 2025. (Yonhap) |
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| ▲ Kim Tschang-yeul's 1979 painting is seen in this image provided by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap) |
Korean artist-MMCA exhibition
'Water droplet' master Kim Tschang-yeul's world of healing opens at MMCA
By Woo Jae-yeon
SEOUL, Aug. 21 (Yonhap) -- The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) is set to open a major retrospective of "water droplet" artist Kim Tschang-yeul, an influential pioneer of Korean contemporary art.
Marking Kim's first retrospective since his passing in 2021, the exhibition will have an extensive look into his life and work, bringing together some 120 pieces, including 31 paintings never before shown to the public.
"This exhibition seeks to supplement the gaps in existing studies of him and provide a comprehensive view of the artist's oeuvre, particularly works from under-explored periods," MMCA Director Kim Sung-hee said at a press event on Thursday.
"I hope that this retrospective will serve as an opportunity to rediscover and reassess Kim as an artist, while offering a rare occasion to encounter the distinctive aesthetics and sentiments inherent in his life and art," she added.
The exhibition breaks down into four sections: "Scar," focusing on his early work; "Phenomenon," covering his transitional years in New York and Paris; "Waterdrops," highlighting the period when his water-droplet paintings flourished; and "Recurrence," exploring his use of language and image.
Several works are being shown for the first time in Korea: eight paintings from Kim's New York period, 11 drawings from the same era and two water-droplet paintings from 1971 that predate "Event of Night" (1972), which was long considered his first in the series.
Kim was born in 1929 in Maengsan, a small mountain town in North Korea. His artistic education at Seoul National University was abruptly cut short after only one year when the Korean War broke out in 1950.
In 1957, he joined a few like-minded artists in bringing Korea's Informel movement to life, adapting the European abstract expressionist style to Korean art. The 1960s marked his entry onto the international stage with exhibitions at the Paris Biennale in 1961 and the Sao Paulo Biennale in 1965. After studying at the Arts Students League of New York from 1966 to 1968, he settled in France in 1970, where he married a French woman and spent the next 45 years.
In an interview with Yonhap News Agency back in 2016, the artist shared a life-changing moment that arrived one morning in the early 1970s.
Waking in the Parisian suburban barn that served as his studio and home, he saw the canvas he had sprayed with water the night before to remove old paint. As sunlight streamed through a small window, the water droplets on the canvas were shining glamorously.
The sight struck him like a bolt of lightning.
"It was spectacular. It was like a symphony," he recalled. "I took pictures of them and started thinking about how to express them on a canvas. Then began my lifelong task."
He painted the same thing repeatedly, because he was a "fool who couldn't do anything else," he said with modesty. But this "foolish act," sustained over decades, was his way of finding inner peace and healing the deep scars that had haunted him since the war.
"For me, thinking about transparent water drops is an act of making bad things go away. I've dissolved and erased horrible memories by painting them countless times," he paused before saying, "I'm almost cured, I think."
The exhibition, titled "Kim Tschang-yeul," opens on Friday and runs through Dec. 21 at the MMCA's Seoul branch.
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