SEOUL, KOREA - Merck Korea, the Korean unit of Germany’s family-owned chemical and biopharmaceutical company Merck Group with a history that spans 346 years, held a press conference on Nov. 18 to introduce a Korean artist and his art work that will play a major role as an ambassador to promote Korean fine art through Merck’s 2015 art calendar.
The calendar initiative, which marks the sixth anniversary this year, is part of the Merck-wide corporate social responsibility program to support Korean art not only in Korea but also around the world at large. The calendar will be distributed to 66 countries in which Merck is active.
“We are playing a role as an evangelist to help many people get to know Korean culture and art naturally through the calendar as they use it every day,” said Michael Grund, Managing Director of Merck Korea. “And in turn, we hope this will contribute to the advancement of the country’s culture and arts.”
The chosen painter for the 2015 art calendar is Kim Geon-il, who is known to draw beyond the visible. While using material characteristics and canvas structures fitting oriental paintings, he adopts Western perspectives and techniques to create unique brushwork and concepts with which new paintings are displayed each time.
The artist’s ability of integration and fresh analysis of objects is in the same vein as Merck’s innovation culture that is described as ‘Merck makes communication visible’ because Merck based on its tradition as the world’s oldest family-run business to deal with the modern industry provides materials for high-tech industries that make various products: flexible TVs, smartphones, cars, functional cosmetics, targeted cancer drugs and growth hormone.
For his art pieces (Desk Calendar, Jan., Feb. and Dec.), the artist draws two images in one picture on traditional Korean paper by repeatedly painting and taking of oil paints of grasses grown at two to three-year intervals in the same place. This expresses our memory fallacy that fails to recognize a change in space and time.
Kim Geon-il also expresses the images that have not yet been found as the conscious on the other side of our memory through visual unexpectedness and color. In Mr. P & Grass (Wall Calendar, May-Jun.) series, the portraits of the Korean Presidents after his birth overlap with the images of grasses. Mr. P & Grass metaphorically expresses that knowing the historical truths is important, but how the truths are preserved and applied in real life is even more important.
He also uses anamophosis seen in Hurting Tongue and Things One Cannot Have and Desire (Desk Calendar, Jun., Jul., and Nov., respectively). Anamorphosis has the characteristic that a specific image can only be seen from a certain point and not others. Kim uses this characteristic in his pieces so that depending on where one is standing, the piece looks different. The artist tries to be aware of the things beyond the things we see, and thus alerts us of our overstated belief in what we see.
Subject matters of Green Pepper (Desk Calendar, Apr.) and Red Cabbage (Desk Calendar, Oct.) – which look like a landscape in an oriental painting – are also just plain foods that we like to eat. Kim Geon-il takes notice of usual things and, through these plain little things in our daily life, suggesting even the same objects can be seen differently if we observe then closely. Hence, he makes us reconsider the existence of each object that we have long forgotten.
His painting technique and efforts toward subject matters look much like Merck’s innovative culture and business. In the art work, Kim emphasizes “The only thing that does not change is the fact that everything does change.” To change means to disappear, and at the same time to develop and to continue innovation.
By Kim Yu-na(yuna@koreaittimes.com)
