Ha Sang Rim has been portraying the vitality of plants, through abstraction at the beginning, then with flower images, and most recently the shape of plant leaves. Her paintings plainly depict the shape of plants with simple yet clear colours and lines.
Read MoreRim says she does not know the exact names of the plants in the photographs, but knows where those photographs were taken. Because it is a landscape the artist physically experienced. And among the numerous landscapes, they are the ones that caught her eyes and stole her heart. It is a very existential world. It is a task to embrace the nature that the artist witnessed with a full faculty of senses, while avoiding botanical knowledge and aesthetic theories. An act of seeing reveals one's intuition with regard to the external world. Intuition is the ability to understand something by just seeing it in person without going through the stages of association, speculation, and judgement. While the artist's painting could be construed as the meaning of life translated in her artistic language as she realised it through the plants, her photography is perceived to be the first-hand product of her intuition. The artist did not say many things about her photography and the plants. After all, to see an exhibition is to be mentally prepared to confront photography all alone with a maximum level of senses and intuition.
Text courtesy GALLERY2.
