ON VIEW NOW THROUGH JULY 3, 2025
As a youth, Helen Kim was intrigued by the beauty of the art on display. Set high on the wall above the chalkboard, the twenty-six drawings were unlike anything she’d ever seen growing up in Korea. Learning that the drawings were the alphabet, she was elated, and even more delighted when she learned to draw the letters for herself. “When I eventually learned cursive, I was lauded for my beautiful penmanship,” she recalls. “It felt like I was drawing.”
Decades later, handwriting remains central to Kim’s artistic practice, an essential dimension of oil and cold wax paintings that contain layers of inscrutable lettering in conversation with saturated color fields. Modernism is pleased to present 39 recent works in Elasticity of Color, on view from May 8th to July 3rd.
In addition to the memories of the alphabet, Kim is deeply influenced by the material world of her childhood. She was especially taken by the vibrant colors of traditional Korean clothing, and the saturated hues of silk gift pouches containing money or jewelry, as notable for the ornate designs of the fabric as the objects they contained. She recalls the bright colors of persimmons, apples and pears, set out on ceremonious occasions. “I was intrigued by the offset, repetitive pattern of the organic shapes.”
Inspiring the title of this exhibition, these memories and colors are embedded in her paintings, often reflected in names such as Persimmons and Hopscotch. Even if the viewer is unfamiliar with the specifics, the specificity of the memories is apparent, and leads the viewer to vicariously experience the artist’s feelings and thoughts, past and present.
Like memories, the paintings have many layers. Kim begins with a single color. After applying a field of paint to the panel, she draws with oil sticks, often inscribing unprompted words that come to mind. Frequently drawn with her non-dominant hand, the letterforms serve as the first move in a visual puzzle that Kim works through by alternate layers of color and line until a solution is reached.
The result is a sort of palimpsest replete with pentimenti. Kim sees the process as “about the interpretation, exploration and execution of an idea,” every stage of which is preserved in the depth of oil and cold wax. Kim’s training as an architect informs her process and the crossover between art and architecture is apparent in her work. In each painting, Kim builds a visual world through the give and take of personal marks, discovering novel structures to scaffold her past.
Kim uses various mediums- paint, drawing and knitting- to recall memories into the present. In works such as Stockinette, she knits compositions that stand beguilingly between two and three dimensions. Even before she mastered the alphabet, Kim learned knitting from her maternal relatives. “I remember the common bond, and the meditative feeling that came from the repetitive motion of connecting loops,” she says. “The linear process is the same for knitting and painting, both of which create complexity through layers of color.”
The complexity lies beyond the reach of words. “My life’s stories are visually narrated and abstracted in my paintings and knitting,” Kim explains. “These memories and events, which have shaped who I am, are the conceptual catalyst for my art.”
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