The Hand of Thought Revelation of Time Eternal

Lee Kyoung-Sook Art critic

Interpreting a work of art is as reckless as growing a beautiful flower only to pluck it and place it in a vase. It curtails the life of the artwork, which like a flower was born into this world and given a precious life.

The biggest difference that distinguishes an artwork from other living thigs is that it is crafted by hand of an artist. It is through his hands that the artist gives life and reveals truth.

The work of art is thus the artist’s alter ego. So in some respects it belongs to him, but not entirely. This is because the birth often takes place at those rare moments when the empty canvas opens its secret door to the artist on its own. At times the birth is a prolonged process, and the longer the labor, the father his able to reach into the depths of the unconscious. When the abyss, which is beyond the artist’s senses, is projected onto the canvas, the latter reveals itself in a new way. It is either the revelation of a new world or unfathomable despair. Tension fills the pictorial plane and like a shining mirror demands that I face it body and all. The more transparent the mirror, the ciearer the object it reflects, and so one must wipe its surface over and over until a definite image emerges. The strength required to open and disclose a realm or even the smallest meanig is achievable only at a peak moment when the artist has gathered all his energy. It is this moment that one comes to understand the saying that one must always be awake. It means that indeed, the thinnest blood vessel must stay alert. The burden of suffering is, of course, the artist’s to bear. The gap between the real and the unreal are visualized by his hands. If we must produce some sort of an interpretation of this work, we could say that the latest series by Kim Gil-Hu represents contemplations of the hand.

Paintings such as I see the Duck Foot, Piano, A Suffering King, My Life, and The Hand of Thought shares the common theme of thoughts about the hands and the feet, which we often dismiss as nothing more than useful tools.

The hands and the feet cannot be made over like the face and thus reveal the true and genuine expression in the raw. The shape of the hand in Piano is like the keys of the instrument it is named after and represents the purity of the warm hand. The painting makes reference to direct contact must be made between the fingers and the keys for the piano to make music, and uses it as a metaphor for the first thought that starts an understanding of an object. The hands of A Suffering King are the ‘hands of desire’ for power and what may accompany it such as melancholy and agony. In My Life the hands represent both distorted identity and genius much like hands of Edward Scissorhands. The hands in the popular Hollywood movie rose above the bane of his existence, the unnatural scissorhands, to bring beauty into the world in a new way. In this respect his scissorhands seem like the unavoidable destiny of the artist himself, who wishes to attribute the suffering that is his face to the accursed ‘hands’.

What then do the halo-like flame, the two hands in prayer, the closed eyes and the veins on the figure’s forehead all mean? Perhaps we may first identify what these forms represent, or put it differently, the things that can be explained, and begin from Roland Barthes’ concept of studium. The circular form represents the archetypal image of human being. The pair of clasped hands are like a flower bud and symbolize buddhas, the Vairocana of light and hope, has one hand with the thumb up and the other hand covering and guarding it. In this painting, the petal to open and discloses to us that miraculous second of epiphany. At that instant when every single capillary seems to have awakened communicate with the world’s energy, the flash of energy opens the eye of enlightenment.

However, the painting itself is beside all the interpretation of forms. It was born in the artist’s bands, but the hands served only as a medium through which the artwork manifested its existence. In this way the artwork opens a new world to the proactive reader-reading a painting now being a familiar concept. The Hand of Thought seems at a first glance a contemporary interpretation of myth, but it only a metaphor for a sadness that ‘escapes’ language.

There is in the world a transparent beauty that is only visible through the deepest and the most unhealable scars, which Roland Barthe called punctum. The distinguishing characteristic of punctum is that these painful traces can neither be comprehended no analyzed.

An artwork, though it is rooted in the unconscious levels of the artist’s self, opens eternity for the viewer to see. Despite the haloed flame and the tension in the veins, this painting exudes simplicity that is noble and a greatness that is silent. It reveals the grief of the artist, who suffers from the scar of unknown origin, or who despairs over the inescapable face of the hands that he shares with Edwards Scissorhands.

Speaking of that which cannot be said in words can also cause a sense of loss because one fears that it may deprive the painting of its truth while also creating a rift between the artwork and the artist.

Imprisoning the painting in the cage of language will be like casting another net of restraint over what should essentially be free from even the artist’s own thinking. Silence may be the only way to fathom the conscious perception of the artist who has confronted immortality in his present life. And thus I find consolation in the words of the philosopher Wittgenstein with which I would like to conclude.

“What we cannot speak of in words, we must pass over in silence. Where language becomes silent, art begins. Language speaks of the world, but a painting shows the world where the worlds end.”