Untitled (Reflets) 2002

This is an undated piece called Untitled (Reflets) by Moon Pil Shim. It’s this very cool sort of layered painting in shades of pink. It’s like, did she make one big painting and then slice it up and then reassemble it? I can imagine Pil Shim in the studio, trying one thing, scraping it back, rethinking, redoing. The horizontal ridges of color make me think of Agnes Martin, but messier, more handmade. This reminds us that painting is not only an intellectual pursuit but also a physical one. Look at the edges, where the paint is thickest, and the way the color shifts and changes as it catches the light. There is an energy here, a life force. These linear marks remind me of ocean waves or maybe rows in a field, and how paint, itself, can have a kind of topography. It is like Pil Shim asks: What can painting do? How can it keep on going? Because artists are always answering each other, riffing off one another, and keeping the conversation going.