Lot 1147: Kim Tchah-Sub (B. 1940)

Kim Tchah-Sub (B. 1940)
PI's Window, 2009
Signed and dated Tchahsub Kim 09, signed on verso in hangul Tchahsub dated Feb 09 and dated and signed on stretcher 2005-07-08 Tchahsub
Acrylic and Chinese ink on linen
15 x 47in. (38.1 x 119.4cm.)

Kim took his first print subject--fields of harsh stones in Lake Paldang, near Seoul--from photos he took before he left Korea for the United States in 1974. He used them for his silkscreen print "Situation," 1970, illustrated in the catalogue of his exhibition at Marronnier Art Center, Korean Culture and Arts Foundation (cat. no. 4). Kim used the same subject in paintings. The painting here shows a field of stones the artist discovered in the pristine Rangeley Lakes region near Roxbury, Maine in 2004. Kim's recent work explores the symbolic relationship between the natural world and pi, a transcendental number used to express ratios in mathematics, physics and chemistry.

The artist was born in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan and his family moved to Gyeongju, Korea in 1944. He graduated from Seoul National University in 1963 and received his MFA from Pratt Institute in 1976 under a John D. Rockefeller 3rd Fund Fellowship. He had one-person exhibitions at the Associated American Artists Gallery, New York, in 1977, the Space Gallery, Seoul, in 1979 and 1984, the Iteza Gallery, Kyoto, in 1986 and the Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, in 1993, Marronnier Art Center, Korean Culture and Arts Foundation, Seoul, in 2002, and in the "Lee Joongsub Award Show" at the Choson Il-bo Museum, Seoul, in 2003. His work was exhibited in "Acquisitions '73-'76," the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in "30 years of American printmaking," the Brooklyn Museum in 1974 and "Six Artists from Korea," Grace Borgenicht Gallery, New York, in 1995. His work was exhibited at the Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, in 2009. Kim's work is in the collections of the Ho-Am Museum, Seoul, the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Kwachon, Korea, the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., the Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Brooklyn Museum and the Cincinnati Museum of Art, among others.

A painting of rocks by the artist was sold in these Rooms, 29 March, 2005, lot 558.