KVT – A Painter of Fire

KVT goes up in flames with Jung Il-Jin

There’s a really good exhibition at the Korean Cultural Center (that excellent art deco building at 49 Nguyen Du…..at the apex of a 3 way corner.

The exhibition is in what is probably the nicest little gallery in Hanoi and seeing its two adjoining spaces are worth the trip alone. It’s a comparatively new addition to the center.

At present the spaces are in flames with canvasses that are also worth the trip three or four times over.

The artist is Korean Jung Il-Jin and can he ever paint flames! Very lavishly! He uses a black canvas and uses luscious, thick strokes that you can just about feel to render flames licking at and roaring into pitch dark heavens.

Whatever your cultural background fire and flames are significant and powerful metaphors and such constructs may influence the way you react to these very powerful images. One Korean commentator likens the flames to the non physical variety that Moses encountered in the burning tree on Mount Sinai – as told in Jewish and Christian mythologies.

I spent a lot of time with the conflagrations and being a romantic I imagined …….

fire as a pillar of flame from hero’s funeral pyre

as a figure being burnt at the stake

as a creature….demonic or benign

as lovers immolating

as ravager of landscapes

as dragon

as Prometheus returning the gift of fire to mankind

as seen here in a very oldie by Heinrich Fuger

Some viewers, like me, who have been lucky enough to sit and meditate, or even roast potatoes, around smoldering embers in the bush on a starry night, they’ll easily see images dancing and cavorting in Jung Il-Jin’s mystic flames

Catch the exhibition while you can…..it closes on the 6th