It was back in 2005. I cried my eyes out before Rim Dong Sik’s artwork exhibited in ARKO Art Center. It was a painting with a man half-submerged in the middle of a river with a bottle in his hand raised up high, pouring the water into the river. I still find that painting novel and meaningful. I didn’t realize it back then, but when I think of it now to pour water into the flowing river is such a meaningless, pointless act. I think that painting depicts the fate of an artist. While the river flows in one direction without being agitated, he stands still to pour the water into the river. This act feels like an artist’s declaration to accept the fate that was given to him as is. Maybe the water that comes out from the bottle symbolizes the sacred body of art.
But when I first saw the painting in 2005, I wasn’t in a place to interpret or comprehend the work. I just lost myself and was immersed in the world of that painting. Honestly, up until then, I didn’t know much about him. I was a bit confused that I broke down and cried in front of the painting. This miraculous encounter had a profound impact on my creative works. To shed tears moved by an artwork in the contemporary art scene can be very cheesy and sound like a drama from the past.
Around the time I saw his work in 2005, I was taking a step away from the obsession to be rational and reasonable when making art. I’m sure that the encounter with Mr. Rim’s work accelerated this process. I believe his works speaks to an individual and something that is within me that is commonly shared by all. They appeal to a certain divine being that responds to and be touched by something beautiful. On the hottest summer day in 2019, I visited Mr. Rim’s studio in Gongju. I still remember the painting I saw that portrayed a bathhouse. Mysterious signs and feelings filled up the bath like vapors so that the painting looked hazy in general, but the colors that penetrated through were so beautiful that they gave me chills. The illusion-like people arouse some sort of mythical imagination. I think Mr. Rim’s devotion and yield for painting is especially well depicted in that painting.
In the perspective of quantum physics, all things in the universe, including our bodies, switch on and off over 10,000 times a second. In other words, we are consist of flickering light. When I saw the naked bodies in the bathhouse, I thought everyone is connected to one another as existence of light. Also, that space mystical, mysterious. It was lively filled with marvelous beauty. It put the desires of finite beings to shame. I thought it was like Mr. Rim’s kingdom that can only be reached through extrasensory perception. Come to think of it, just like the painting Memories of the Summer 1981 that made me cry and helped me escape the mannerism this painting of the bathhouse also relates to water.
John the Baptist used water to baptize. The life-reviving waves roll beneath the feet of Water-Moon Avalokiteshvara. When I look at Mr. Rim’s paintings, it doesn’t matter what are painted. The layers of tiny, crisp, oil-less brush strokes are like a mantra that repeats and is connected infinitely. I think it expands some dense energy field. Maybe it’s an absolute beauty? I think Mr. Rim’s determination that could even save us is programmed in his paintings. He’s showing us that we don’t have to portray religious figures or magnificent, holy scenery to describe beauty. Just like the air around us, I think he’s telling us that beauty can found everywhere.
When I look at Rim’s paintings of trees, I can see his precious devotion not to miss any leaves. All beings are loved equally in his paintings. Each leaf is painted repeatedly, layer after layer while continuously getting erased, disappeared, and revealed again. While doing so, he is keen with his extrasensory perception to wake every single moment.
That is why the world in his paintings is a different world that is more real than reality itself. I think that’s why Mr. Rim’s landscape paintings become a pathway for us to enter different time and space. In 2005, one of Mr. Rim’s paintings flew and lodged in me like a meteor. Since then, how I treat life and art has changed. My art no longer isolated my life. They started to get along. I’m grateful for Mr. Rim Dong Sik. It’s because I used to deny my emotions, doubt touching moments, and add cynical jokes into my works as if that was the way to be pedantic. These terrible artistic attitudes have been corrected a bit, thanks to him. I’m a weak, easily breakable being, but I have a wish to create at least one piece in my life that touches heart of the holy being living in us with profound beauty. For offering me the courage to keep that wish, and for paving the way far ahead of us, while casting a big shadow on us, I want to thank Mr. Rim Dong Sik.
