Rise Up Rim Dong Sik

Seoul Museum of Art(SeMA) presents Rise Up Rim Dong Sik from August 19 till December 31, 2020. Rise Up Rim Dong Sik is a solo exhibition surveying the life-long practice of Rim Dong Sik (b. 1945), an artist who has made a unique trajectory in the history of contemporary Korean art. It is an opportunity to rediscover a prominent contemporary artist by presenting his works and archives including his nature and field-based performances archives, paintings, and drawings.

Rim is recognized as a nature artist in the Korean art scene, he has been considerably underrated and there has not been sufficient research about the artist. He has consistently pursued an art world of his own integrating nature, life, and art as a persistent performer and meticulous archivist to overcome the limits of performance art. The city of Seoul plans to inaugurate Art Archives, Seoul Museum of Art (Dec 2021), which will become the center of the collection, preservation and research of art document resources and has received a total of about 5,000 pieces of resources from the artist since 2018. Rim’s works encompassing archives such as photographs of the time, idea sketches, and exhibition planning documents have been organized and interpreted presenting a new and broader understanding of the artist. Thus, the Seoul Museum of Art seeks to suggest a novel perspective to broaden the understanding about the artist by collaborating with Culture Headquarters, Seoul Metropolitan Government and unraveling the artist’s art resources from the 1970s to 2000s in an exhibition.

The artist’s archive in this exhibition is presented as pure creations to be systematically collected, categorized, stored and studied, as well as a cradle of significant artistic inspirations, and not as records that accumulate like sediments in the deep sea. In addition, the recursive summoning of the moment of artistic act that could have been forever forgotten becomes a new creative act transcending time beyond mere purpose of documentation and a product with unlimited expandability. With this type of development as the horizontal which tracks Rim’s artistic trajectory as a lifelong archivist and performer, the four distinct themes of the exhibition become the verticals that intersect this, together encompassing the artistic activities of Rim as a nature artist that are both overarching and individualized by period.

The title of the exhibition, Rise Up Rim Dong Sik, is inspired by two performances—Stand up, and Rise Up—presented at the first meeting of the Yatoo-Outdoor Field Art Research Association*, held at the Geumgang, Gongju, 1981. It dynamically captures the monumental moment since which Rim has walked a path of his own. The exhibition is largely divided into four themes to follow the chronological flow and characteristics of works of the artist: Gesture, Flow, Village, and Poetic Notion. From resistance to reality and convention to performances of communion with nature and paintings that navigate between the realms of fact and imagination, the exhibition highlights an art world of the artist, who did not conform to the dominant tendency of the time and freely express his artistic vision.

*Yatoo is a group of Geumgang based artists for studying outdoor field art through novel contact with nature. The founding declaration of Yatoo is written by Rim. Here’s an excerpt from it. 
 
“Yatoo is a group that studies outdoor art through fresh contact with nature, and is based on passionate love for nature. We praise its natural change, infinite width and depth, and every life force in it. Studying pure art that comes with the purity of nature, Yatoo holds research meetings through four seasons and publishes works of art. All this, in order to broaden the range of awareness and explore new methodologies…”

1. Gesture
Since moving to Seoul in 1964 until returning home to Gongju in 1979, it was not a coincidence that Rim chose the method of “performance” in “outdoor field” as he possessed a desire to realize autonomous art. Gestures represent the artist’s “body” and “act” of doing something, and symbolize fresh and vibrant energy in which the young artist’s unrefined struggles in seeking changes from existing forms are mixed with the pure nature that contrasts with the frustrating realities.

Photographs and images that recorded momentary acts are reorganized and archived as books or presented in exhibitions and used as references in the next performance. His gestures from the past are recalled recursively and recreated from various angles with the perspective of a horizontal bond between nature and humans rather than a mere reproduction of the past, and this has become a unique artistic method of the artist.

This section mainly focuses on Rim’s early works and their relation to his paintings afterward. Following the Korean Young Artist Association between 1974 to 1979, his gestures from the Geumgang Contemporary Art Festival in 1980 and Yatoo-Outdoor Field Art Research Association that he embarks on Nature Art with artists based in the Geumgang area in the summer of 1981 are also introduced.

2. Flow
During his studies at the University of Fine Arts at Hamburg, Germany (1981–1989), the designs and outputs of works from “inside” and “outside” are divided by theme and transformed into more than 20 handmade compilations. At the same time, he also creates works that unconstrainedly unravel countless threads of thought on a piece of paper, a highly affordable and accessible medium. These unparalleled books and playful drawings can be considered a type of extensive archiving that record even the slightest glimpses of Rim’s thoughts. The works during this period, which were produced in a state of flow like the way a child is immersed in “play,” can be characterized and classified as follows: Sound-visual Play, llusion Play and Medium Play.

3. Village
In the early 1990s in Wongol Village, Gongju, Rim begins a lifestyle that follows the ways of nature as in pre-civilization times. By planting flowers, building houses by hand, living with rabbits and dogs, and establishing relationships with villagers, he gets closer to the instinctual laws of nature through a life of interacting and sympathizing with nature through the body, unlike the civilized life centered on brain. Through this the artist’s gesture and brushstroke achieve a more spontaneous maturity.

While establishing a bond with the villagers, Rim realized that farming and Nature Art were not so different from each other as “farming” is “a way of human life communicating with the nature.” Based on this understanding the artist held an art festival called Art and Village along with the villagers of Wongol. Art and Village presents a pioneering form of community art through the active participation of villagers. Where art is embodied in the village and everyday life, the artist suggests a new aesthetic perspective in his statement “art is farming, farming is art.”

4. Poetic Notion
“Poetic Notion” demonstrates that his paintings are a new “interpretation” of his past performances in nature, which goes beyond “reenactment.” They are like a poem in which the traces of memories and emotions uncaptured by technical media such as photographs or videos are reinterpreted and amplified. Rim Dong Sik’s art practice, which is infinitely cyclical, connecting the inside and outside of nature and life, is also present in his painting and creates a unique painterly language. In order to depict the subtle moments of mutually sympathetic interaction with nature in the most natural form he constantly experiments with structures, pigments, expressions, etc. over a long time and “remakes” them. The process resembles the gesture of repetitively refining poetries that are stuck in their poetic notions.

In this section, the recent paintings are also introduced. Recently, the artist has been summoning the past works of his colleagues and taking them as the subject of his painting. Additionally, in the catalogue Art and Village (2001), he recorded the performance of his colleague that was not recorded 20 years ago with essays and photographs. As a continual archiving project, his recent work is a new concept of creation and an archive that attempts to reconstruct what has been lost.

About the artist
Born in Yeongi-gun, Chungnam, in 1945, Rim Dong Sik studied painting at Hongik University in Seoul and graduated from the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg. Working as a founding member of Korea Young Artist Association (1974–1979) and Yatoo, Rim has consistently explored his own world of art in building companionship with nature. During his studies in Hamburg (1981–1989), Rim consistently introduced his works and Yatoo’s works by curating an exhibition called Inside to Outside, Outside to Inside (University of Fine Arts Hamburg, 1989) and also participated in the international exhibition like Art-of-Peace Biennale (Hamburg, 1985). After returning from Germany, he settled in Wongol village, Gongju, and organized Art and Village (1993–2003) which drew much public attention. In this venture, he suggests the idea of “Art is Farming and Farming is Art.” Upon the recommendation of his friend, he started painting again and is currently thinking through the novel idea of painting as archives as he ruminates on past memories and emotions in Gongju.

The artist has had solo exhibitions at the Seoul Museum of Art (2020), Daejeon Museum of Art (2016), and Arko Art Center in 2005. He has also continually presented works at Daegu Art Museum (2020), Busan Museum of Art (2018), and Art Sonje Center (2019). In 1985, Rim won the Kunstpreis Altona in Germany, and the Park Soo Keun Art Prize in 2020.

Exhibit-Related Programs
Due to Covid-19, SeMA operates according to the social distancing system and opening hours is determined by its level. The museum has been introducing the exhibition online through social media channels.

“Archive Story,” a program introducing the archives of the exhibition is released every Wednesday night through SeMA’s social medial accounts and “Our Little World,” an educational program for families is also offered from October, 2020. Artist’s Talk online will be released on December, 2020. Please subscribe to our Youtube channel and follow us on instagram @seoulmuseumofart.

Publication
In conjunction with the exhibition, this catalog gathers together all the paintings and archives from the 1970s to now on display and supplements them with descriptions and essays to broaden the understanding of Rim Dong Sik. Especially, “Spoken Words of Rim Dong Sik: Thinking Memories,” an edited conversation with the artist based on the archives, introduces Rim’s ways of thinking and serves as another source for future research. Essays from Gim Jonggil and Seunghan Paek provide more in-depth views of the world of Rim Dong Sik and suggests diverse approaches to understand the artist.

This exhibition and the catalog will both be the initial step toward archive-related research and an opportunity to comprehensively witness the artistic methods of Rim, an artist who has consistently pursued an art world of his own integrating nature, life, and art as a persistent performer and meticulous archivist to overcome the limits of performance art.

ISBN 979-11-88619-66-5
Paperback: 367 pages

Participating Artist Rim Dong Sik 

Organized by Seoul Museum of Art and Seoul Metropolitan Government, Culture Headquarters

Curated by Seungah Helen Lee

Coordinated by Kim Sang Chul, Jihee Jun, Jung Heeyoon