Johyun Gallery presents Kim Taek Sang’s solo exhibition 《As It Is》 from August 26 to November 8, 2026. Spanning the gallery’s three spaces in Dalmaji and Haeundae in Busan and in Seoul, the exhibition brings together recent works, including the new Ice Blossom series, large-scale paintings, and video works.

As It Is
 
The exhibition title 《As It Is》 encapsulates a central idea that runs through Kim Taek Sang’s working process and artistic practice. Here, “as it is” refers to an approach in which the artist acts without determining every outcome through his own intention, allowing water and pigment to behave according to their inherent properties.
 
Water and pigment produce different states and traces in response to gravity and time, light and temperature, humidity and seasonal change. The artist selects the materials and determines when a work begins, when a process is repeated, and when it ends, while the material transformations that occur during that process vary according to natural conditions.
 
Human action and the inherent processes of the natural world thus come together in the formation of a single painting. This is the meaning of “as it is” that emerges from Kim’s work.
 
“As it is,” therefore, refers less to a fixed state than to a process in which things change and develop according to their inherent properties. This perspective connects the flow, sedimentation, and evaporation of water in Kim’s earlier practice with the freezing and thawing that appear in the new Ice Blossom series, bringing his long-running painterly investigation into a continuous trajectory.

Ice Blossom
 
The new Ice Blossom series begins with the transformation of water—the primary medium of Kim Taek Sang’s practice for more than three decades—in the low temperatures of winter.
 
While Breathing, Flows, and Resonance have been associated respectively with the temporalities of spring, summer, and autumn, Ice Blossom, unveiled for the first time in this exhibition, introduces the conditions of winter into his practice.
 
Ice Blossom extends Kim’s earlier exploration of flow and evaporation to another physical transformation of water: freezing and thawing. As water and pigment freeze at low temperatures and subsequently melt, crystalline traces and new surfaces form across the canvas. Even with the same basic materials, changes in temperature and season generate different painterly results.
 
This transformation is closely connected to the meaning of 《As It Is》 Here, “as it is” encompasses the way materials change according to their own properties under given conditions. In Kim’s paintings, seasonal shifts alter light, temperature, and humidity, directly affecting the flow and evaporation of water, the sedimentation and drying of pigment, and the processes of freezing and thawing.

More Than Three Decades of Painterly Investigation
 
For more than three decades, Kim Taek Sang has developed a distinctive painting methodology by pouring heavily diluted pigment onto canvas and repeatedly allowing it to settle and dry. Through this process, changes in light and color, gravity and time, and seasonal conditions accumulate on the surface. His sustained investigation has developed through series such as Breathing, Flows, and Resonance, in which the properties of materials and changing natural conditions generate different colors and surfaces.
 
In 《As It Is》, this long-term investigation is extended through the new Ice Blossom series, the video work There, and large-scale paintings. There reveals the microscopic particles and layers of pigment that constitute the painted surface, while the large-scale works expand the accumulated transformations of material and color across a broader pictorial field.
 
《As It Is》 brings together the painterly methodology Kim has developed over more than thirty years while showing how his sustained investigation of water and pigment continues to open new possibilities through changing seasonal and environmental conditions.
 
 
 
Beauty — Alumdaum
 
The Korean adjective areumdapda (아름답다), meaning “beautiful,” generally refers to something that is pleasing, satisfying, or emotionally affecting to perceive. The precise etymology of areum remains uncertain, though it is sometimes interpreted today as suggesting “being true to oneself”—existing in accordance with one’s inherent nature.
 
Kim reinterprets the idea of beauty through his own term, “Alumdaum” (알움다움). In Kim’s usage, “alum” (알움) refers to a seed. Just as a seed sprouts and grows according to the qualities contained within it, the term describes a state in which each being unfolds its inherent potential in its own way.
 
This idea of Alumdaum resonates with Kim’s understanding of “as it is”: water and pigment flow and settle according to their respective properties, while light, temperature, humidity, and seasonal conditions continually shape their formation and transformation within the painting.

Aesthetic and Art-Historical Position within Korean Abstract Painting
 
The aesthetic core of Kim Taek Sang’s painting lies in bringing human artistic action and the workings of the world into a single painterly process of formation. The artist’s choices and judgments remain clearly present, while water and pigment change according to their material properties and the natural conditions surrounding them.
 
This methodology extends Dansaekhwa’s emphasis on materiality and process by exploring how human action and natural processes can together generate pictorial form.
 
If 1970s Dansaekhwa established new forms of painting through repetitive bodily action and an intensified engagement with materiality, Kim allows gravity, sedimentation, evaporation, light, temperature, and seasonal change to act directly upon the formation of the painting through the medium of water and pigment. In doing so, he extends the temporality of nature and the transformation of matter into the pictorial field itself.
 
The labels “second-generation Dansaekhwa” and “post-Dansaekhwa” provide one point of departure for locating Kim within art history. His practice can more specifically be understood as a sustained development of the relationships among human action, material, nature, and time within Korean abstract painting after Dansaekhwa.
 
《As It Is》 brings more than three decades of this investigation into the present, showing how Kim has developed questions of material, nature, and time into a distinctive painterly methodology within Korean abstraction after Dansaekhwa.
 
 
 
Exhibition Information
 
Exhibition: 《Kim Taek Sang: As It Is》
Dates: August 26 – November 8, 2026
Venues: Johyun Gallery Dalmaji · Haeundae · Seoul
Featured works: New Ice Blossom series, large-scale paintings, and video works
Organized by: Johyun Gallery
Website: Johyun Gallery