권 기 철 Kwon, Ki Chul

He majored in painting at the Department of Fine Arts at Kyungpook National University and Yeungnam University Graduate School. His works have been featured at fairs and auctions including California, Guangzhou, PIA, MANIF, KIAF, Shanghai Expo, Seoul International Art Fair, Seoul Auction, and K Auction. He has been invited to the Gwangju Biennale, the Triton Museum of Art in the United States, the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in Japan, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, and the Seoul Museum of Art. He has been invited to over 600 curated exhibitions including Sports and Play Through Art, Spectrum-Rhythm Formative Sympathy, Namdo Culture Food Journey, Seoul Contemporary Korean Painting, and Korean Painting Identity Recovery. He created portraits of 39 Korean linguistics scholars for the National Institute of Korean Language. Since 1993, he has held 56 solo exhibitions in Seoul, Paris, California, Tokyo, Daegu, Busan, Jeju, and Cheongju.

Artist Statement

A blank sheet of hanji and a canvas overwhelm me like a field covered in white snow. Standing before them, I sometimes lose my way. I find myself crying out and having no choice but to ask for directions. After wandering for a long time, I hear the canvas urging me to look deeply into the everyday.

I raise my brush and record them with red and blue dots and lines. Secretly, ever more secretly — I have been peering into the traces of daily life.

My recent works, such as Secret Narrative of the Everyday, carve out a freer path, and further still, Untitled is something in which my whole body becomes the brush — something I wish to erase even that — “something that is fine even without meaning” or “something I do not wish to define even with a title.”