Myong Kim looked at a painting of two villagers walking with a cow.
”It feels like my hometown,” said Kim, who was born in a small village in South Korea. ”It reminds me of the countryside, and how calm and pure it was.”
Kim had read about this exhibit of 10 contemporary Korean artists in a full-page ad of the Korea Times, a Korean-language newspaper in Chicago. The exhibit, which opened last week in the Foster Bank Community Center, 5225 N. Kedzie Ave., includes 30 oil paintings and is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily through Sunday.
Jung Ho Park, cultural information officer for the Korean consulate, said this is the first major exhibit of Korean artists in the Midwest.
It starts a week of events celebrating the 47th anniversary of Korea`s Aug. 15 liberation from Japanese occupation. Other events include a parade and screenings of Korean movies. The activities also include Chicago`s fifth annual Korea Day, held on Aug. 14, which celebrates the community of 120,000 Korean-Americans in the Chicago area.
June Park, who emigrated from Korea 15 years ago and runs an international trading company, helped bring the exhibit to Chicago.
”I visit Korea three to four times a year, and when I saw a gallery with some of these paintings, I liked them,” Park said. ”With other contemporary art, you need special knowledge to understand it. But anyone could relate to these paintings.
”Western people think we do only ink and brush paintings,” Park said.
”I wanted them to know that we also do oil paintings.”
Park also hoped to bridge other cultural gaps by bringing the exhibit to Chicago.
”There`s the impression that Koreans come to the States just to make money,” she said. ”Americans aren`t exposed to Korean art, and they don`t really recognize that we are as sophisticated as any culture of people. They think we are some kind of mysterious people. We`d like to open the door for them so they can see what we are.”
The 10 artists are all members of the Shin Art Association, a Korean group of oil painters. Many have studied in Paris or Toronto, and all have participated in numerous exhibits in Korea and abroad. All 10 attended the opening.
Using an interpreter, artist Il Hae Kim said the exhibit offered opportunities to celebrate and to provide new inspiration for painting.
”First, it`s a celebration of the 47th Korean Independence Day,” Kim said. ”Also, while we are here we will sketch the scenery, and these sketches will be exhibited in Korea when we return.”
Kim also said that while the 10 artists use Western materials such as oil paints, they incorporate Korean elements in their work.
”When we choose the texture of lines and colors, these are related to calligraphy techniques,” Kim said. ”It takes many years of training for the line to express itself. The line is alive; it`s part of the Korean way of thinking.”
Another painter, Tae Guil Lee, had a slightly different view of the interaction of artistic styles.
”It`s not between Western and Eastern, but rather what`s coming from the inside,” Lee said. ”I use both, and see what I can create with them.” Lee estimated that about half of today`s Korean artists use Western materials, while half use traditional Korean materials such as ink and rice paper.
Kun Chae Bae, the founder of the bank, who donates the exhibit space for community functions, said the exhibit provided an exciting forum for cultural exchange.
”This provides an opportunity for Korean-Americans to catch up on what`s happening in Korea,” Bae said. ”This way, Koreans also know that Korean-Americans are anxious to know what`s going on. It helps bring the two Koreas together. Otherwise, the two groups are so far apart, it`s hard to communicate-even though they speak the same language.”
Oak Park resident Anthony Fraioli said he was impressed by the exhibit.
”I expected to see something more in the traditional Korean style,”
Fraioli said. ”I was surprised to see how well-done this non-traditional Asian art was.”
The paintings had a special meaning for Myong Kim.
”These paintings remind me of my old country town,” she said. ”They remind me of myself, maybe.”
