Tina Kim Gallery is pleased to present Kim Tschang-Yeul: Recurrence, our third solo exhibition of the Korean émigré painter who devoted five decades of his career to the sustained exploration of luminous, hyperrealistic waterdrops. Focusing on works from the 1980s through the 2010s, the exhibition traces the evolution of Kim’s mature practice as he embraced a more tactile materiality, experimented with varied surfaces and grounds, and began working on a larger scale. At its center is his Recurrence series, which emerged in the mid-1980s, shown alongside significant Waterdrop paintings from across these decades. Together, the works demonstrate the remarkable range Kim drew from a single motif, continually pushing its formal and conceptual possibilities.
The waterdrop motif emerged from a chance encounter with the material itself. While working in a makeshift studio outside Paris, Kim splashed water onto the back of his canvases. When the droplets caught the light, he was struck by their extraordinary appearance and began searching for a way to capture their fleeting presence through painting.