KIM Whanki’s “All-Over Dot Paintings”
[Where, in What Form, Shall We Meet Again series]
In 1963 Kim Whanki participated in the 7th Sao Paulo Biennale and was presented with the Award of Honor. Shortly thereafter, he went to New York, betting his life on a new artistic challenge. Like the pilgrimage of a truth-seeker, his time of fierce creation gradually gave birth to his “all-over dot painting,” in which figurative portrayal disappeared completely, and countless “dots” freely played different variations of color and rhythm, infinitely expanding to create the “all-over dot painting.” In 1970, Kim submitted his work Where, in What Form, Shall We Meet Again—which is seen as the true beginning of the “all-over dot painting” style— to the 1st Korea Arts Exhibition and awarded the Grand Prize, thus opening a new chapter in Korean abstract art.
The Where, in What Form, Shall We Meet Again series refers to a group of the artist’s works, among his all-over dot paintings, that have blue dots evenly painted horizontally across the canvas. Instead of his former method of thickly applying layers of oil paint on the canvas, he used his own recipe of “shades” (made by mixing oil paint with generous amounts of turpentine) to fill in the dots, which soaked into the canvas fabric. This created tones with depth and strong lyric sentiment, comparable to traditional ink soaking into paper, that awed viewers and evoked emotional resonance. Kim Whanki’s Where, in What Form, Shall We Meet Again series thus reduces and marks the time of his life as an artist, his “human connections and longing throughout his life,” into “dots,” thereby demonstrating a world of ultimate lyric abstraction.
