Luna Kim

The first image that comes to my mind when starting a painting is like a bodily symptom. These images evoke a frustrating and painful feeling, while also providing a sense of relief. As the neck tightens, a window pierces through the chest, and liquid pours out of the hole. This process repeats itself, with the hole being sutured and the neck being freed, only to break again. As I watch this process in my mind, I am simultaneously gripped by fear and fascination, like a captive audience. I feel an urgent need to capture these persistently burning images on canvas. However, these images are elusive, like moving through fog, making it difficult to trap them in a painting. I repeat this process in my head, breaking and rebuilding again and again.

In real life, when I start to brush, the blurry images come into focus, revealing ugly details that were previously blocked by the fog. At first, I apply colors quickly according to their shape. To make the collapse clearer, I begin by painting the clearest and most contrasting colors. The colors I use come from the body, but they are more exaggerated than they would be in real life, such as Cadmium Red, Emerald Green, Lemon Yellow, and Deoxyzen Mub. These highly saturated colors lose their clarity as they merge into the mass of the painting. I poke and push the brush into the parts where something pops out of the shape, repeating the process over and over again, like squeezing out pus, experiencing both pain and relief. After repeating these moves, I become exhausted and take a break. When I return, I hold the brush longer and sweep it across the canvas in a curve. It feels as if I am tearing down a mass beyond my body.

Then, I reapply vivid colors and shapes to the parts of the image that have been ruined. I lightly and cheerfully brush the wide canvas, and the repainted colors are no longer flat. The colors flow unevenly and stickily over the rough surface created by the collapsing brushstrokes. Unlike the first paint, this time the paint feels like a toxic liquid from the body, like the gravy and sauces of leftover dishes flowing down the surface of the meat. I am no different from someone playing with food on a plate, except that I do not throw the scraps away, believing that the image in my mind will appear on the canvas after this process.