Lim Ok-sang
Lim Ok-sang
Art Students League of Denver
200 Grant Street, Denver, CO 80203
Curated by Sammy Seung-min Lee
October 11-November 29, 2019
Admission: Free
Review by Marie Krueger
“Not being able to rebel or resist against injustice and immorality, I do not regard that as human...I believe that defiance and resistance are the most important fountain of creation for an artist.”
Lim Ok-sang is a progressive contemporary artist who first began painting in the 1970’s. Born in 1950, he came of age during South Korea’s October Restoration period. Deeply affected by the political climate, he watched as many democratic figures were imprisoned and sentenced to death under President Park Chung-hee’s assumed office. His work became a reaction to the chaos and injustice he witnessed and laid the groundwork for the formation of future political movements.
He emerged early on as one of the foremost artists from the Minjung (People’s) Art movement—a populist artistic countermovement that arose in response to South Korea’s Gwangju Massacre in 1980. Estimates suggest that over 600 people died in Gwangju when thousands of student demonstrators protesting the military dictatorship of Chun Doo-hwan were raped, tortured, and killed by government troops. Minjung artists used traditional Korean art forms such as painting and woodblocks to glorify themes of nature and laborers and called for human rights and Korean reunification. The movement also criticized the Americanization of Korea, imperialism, and authoritarianism. As a result, many Minjung artists were tortured and imprisoned by the government.
From its inception, Lim’s work has been an act of defiance. At his 2019 solo exhibition at Gana Art Hong Kong (Heurk) entitled Declaring Liberty with One Stroke he explained:
As an artist, I had to take action. That was to verify my existence. I objectified myself and my home country as a single entity. As the same body! The sorrow of my home country is thus the sorrow of myself.”[...] “Through this exhibition, I proclaim my declaration of liberty, while reaffirming by desire for freedom and to construct my future life, in a simple term, as an anarchist. I must live as an anarchist with completely unshakable free will.
Lim Ok-sang, Sword Dance II, 2019, soil and ink on canvas, 130 cm x 100 cm. Image by Marie Krueger.
There is a physicality to his work. Many of his pieces are created with a giant brush the size of a mop. His latest work is done using soil, the essence of his home land. In a process he’s struggled to perfect over the last 25 years, he mixes in different additives so it doesn’t clump together and crack. It is a difficult medium to work with, but one he insists on.
“I wish to receive the spirit of this earth and deliver it to the people...an artist must tell a story with his or her entire body.” Indeed, he lives this credo, as many of his works are completed in public during demonstrations. He believes that every person was born to draw and wishes to reach as many people as possible with his work and inspire them to resist and make their own art.
Lim Ok-sang, Portrait of Poet Baek Seok, 2019, soil and ink on canvas, 130 x 150 cm. Image by Marie Krueger.
His works at ASLD are arresting and loom large over the space. Some are representational portraits and incorporate ink and bits of straw. Lim's 2019 portrait of the poet Baek Seok, for example, at nearly 4.5 x 5 feet in size, is made of six separate panels of incised soil and ink depicting the face of the poet on a massive scale, staring directly at the viewer. Some are abstract with fluid calligraphic strokes. Others are visceral strikes that push the soil over the edge and off the border of the canvas, into the space around it.
His works can be challenging at first glance, but when understood within the context of their history and the spirit of defiance and love for humanity they were created with, it becomes clear that they do not belong in our living room, but our psyche.
“I am now liberated. I am never going to be interfered (with) by anything. I hereby declare freedom even from myself. I shall live as I wish. That stroke made at the beginning of time, that stroke of a brush is incarnated here and now.”
Lim Ok-sang is part of a concurrent exhibition at Redline Contemporary Art Center entitled counterART: Aesthetics of South Korean Activism + Global Perspectives where his monumental piece Tide of Candles, II will be on display through December 15th.
Marie Krueger is a Denver-based artist and designer. She hold a BFA in Digital Design from the University of Colorado, Denver.
