Récurrence 1995

Kim Tschang-yeul made this painting, Récurrence, with oil, probably in his studio. Look at the way he builds the ground of this painting, a sort of soft grid of brown. It’s the kind of colour that makes you think of unbleached linen, or maybe even cardboard - a real support, in other words. Then there are these raindrops suspended on top of the grid. The paint isn’t too thick, but it sits right on the surface. Zooming in, you can see how each raindrop has a little highlight, a kind of bright pop that makes you think of a single, perfect bead of water. You can imagine the artist, slowly and deliberately placing each one, responding to the grid below. It’s meditative, a little repetitive, but that's the point, right? Kim’s raindrops remind me a little bit of Agnes Martin’s grids – both artists using repetition to create these fields of subtle variation. There’s something about this embrace of process that feels so honest. It’s as if they’re saying, “Here’s what I did. What do you think?"