Korean Artist Kim Jeong-Sook Brings Decades of Nature-Inspired Work to Chongqing

Chongqing - On July 31, the Wang Qi Art Museum in downtown Chongqing opened its doors to a sweeping survey of contemporary Korean art that bridges centuries of East Asian aesthetic tradition with bold, material-driven experimentation. Titled "China-Korea · Yi Jing — Kim Jeong-sook Contemporary Art Exhibition," the show presents more than ninety works spanning over three decades of the artist's teaching and practice, offering visitors a rare glimpse into how one of South Korea's most respected color-painting masters translates the natural world into layered, tactile abstraction.

Kim Jeong-Sook is introducing her works to Chongqing visitors (Photo: the Event Organizer)

Kim, a professor at Korea National University and a pivotal figure in the lineage of Korean color painting, has long pursued what she describes as yi jing — the classical East Asian concept of "artistic conception" that fuses emotion, scenery, and spirit into a single resonant whole. In her artist statement at the opening, she explained that her mixed-media canvases, built from traditional Korean hanji paper, tidal mud, plant charcoal, and natural fibers, are not merely depictions of landscape but records of "the traces left by nature, humanity, and life itself."
The Chongqing stop is the latest leg of a touring exhibition that debuted in March at Beijing's Shu Yong Art Museum, where curators framed Kim's practice as a form of "rooted contemporaneity" — deeply anchored in Korean material culture yet fluent in the global language of abstraction.

The Wang Qi Museum presentation is organized around two thematic cores: "Nature · Contemplation" and "Nature · Implication," guiding viewers through monumental canvases where deep indigo crashes against burning vermilion, and monochrome fields of interlaced fiber evoke tidal rhythms and geological time.

Director of the Wang Qi Art Museum grants collection certificate to Kim Jeong-Sook (Photo: the Event Organizer)

For Chongqing's cultural institutions, the exhibition carries diplomatic weight as well as artistic significance. Yang Guangshun, director of the Chongqing International Cultural Exchange Center, noted that the show extends a longstanding artistic bond between the mountain city and South Korea, describing it as "a deep humanistic dialogue that transcends borders and language." Museum director Yang Lei also presented Kim with a collection certificate during the ceremony, formally adding one of her works to the institution's permanent holdings.

The opening day concluded with a salon where scholars and artists from both nations debated the contemporary relevance of Eastern aesthetics — a conversation that felt especially timely given the broader push for cultural exchange between China and South Korea this year. For Kim, who has mentored more than fifty Chinese graduate students during her tenure, the Chongqing audience represents something personal as much as professional. 

"Art knows no borders," curator Ruan Bin remarked. "What you feel standing before these canvases is a quiet, warming power that belongs to everyone."