“To evoke the past in the form of an image, you have to be able to abstract yourself from the present action, you have to know how to attach value to the useless, you have to want to dream. Man alone is perhaps capable of such an effort."
BERGSON Henri, Matière et Mémoire, Paris, Presses
universitaires de France, 1896, page 49
In 2016, Jung ho Kim arrived in France expecting a new apprenticeship, but what he encountered was a feeling of the unknown. “When the ego reaches to an unknown country or city, the experience is part of the body, arms, legs, smell and taste. In an unknown environment without landmarks, he admits that in comparison with the initial project which was to broaden his perspective, he has become more withdrawn. But he adds that it was an opportunity to focus on himself. Unlike his country, where he was with people who looked alike, he could focus on himself in the midst of completely different people. Looking back on his past, he tried to find a solution to overcome the feeling of the unknown and the loneliness he was facing, through the feeling of nostalgia and the question of memory.
Born in Andong, South Korea in 1992, Jung ho Kim spent his childhood in a quiet countryside. Thanks to his childhood where he played with his friends in nature, he has many natural landscapes in his memories. Graduated from the CARMA master's degree (Artistic Creation, Research and Practice of the Art World) at the University of Toulouse 2 Jean Jaurès in 2021, he works from the landscapes of his memory. Being in a foreign land since 2016, Jung ho Kim raises questions about space and man while pondering nostalgia and memories. Under the theme of "representation of memory", he practices installation and painting, recently he expresses "mental landscapes" through his drawings.
The islands floating in the middle of the sea, the sparkling waves, and especially the islands drawn in charcoal are reminiscent of an ink painting. According to him, the island is a fragment in the universe of the artist's memory. Many spaces and landscapes floating in memory are divided into many islands. The unconsciously drawn island on which buildings and people sometimes appear, shows part of his memory. The island located beyond the sea is rather difficult to approach for Jung ho Kim, because he is not from an island. We can remember the past but we cannot go back to it completely. This physical and mental distance is expressed in his eyes as an artist by the reminiscence and regret of the past.
Regarding the use of charcoal, he answers “the rebirth of memory”. Like the representation of a scene from his memory on the painting, the use of charcoal having the memory of nature can be considered as the rebirth of a natural landscape. In this way, reawakening the memories of a tree in nature with a touch of charcoal reminds us of a kind of reincarnation. In this cycle, Jung ho Kim faces the past and confirms the existence of the present with his practice of “memory representation”.
Life in a foreign country far from his hometown may have been hard on him. The things he faced in an unfamiliar, unmarked environment must have been difficult. In the “disorientation” of an unknown place, Jung ho Kim tries to abstract himself from his current situation, and to dream. In this process, he confirms his existence with his past and continues the present. We can say that his works are the mirror that reflects his past and a process of spiritual formation that allows him to move forward.