Kim Young-Hun 金永憲
Diamond Mountain – Electronic Nostalgia / Soluna Fine Art / Hong Kong / Apr 3 – Aug 1, 2020 / Valencia Tong / With potted plants at the entrance and green chequered tiles on the second storey, the gallery space at Soluna Fine Art exuded an aura of playfulness. On view at the gallery was Korean artist Kim Young-Hun’s solo show Diamond Mountain – Electronic Nostalgia. The artist’s colour-saturated paintings blend the aesthetics of the analogue and the digital, the philosophical and the technological, and the historical and the futuristic. His abstract canvases explore the disorientation brought about by the blurred boundaries between the virtual, digital world and our real lives. The result is a mishmash of traditional Korean landscapes, glitchy geometrical patterns and Van Gogh-like oscillating lines, which recall interference on television screens. Although the paintings in the artist’s oeuvre allude to forms of technology that are ubiquitous in our lives, the artist also pays tribute to history, citing the Buddhist Diamond Sutra as his inspiration. To achieve enlightenment, one has to shatter illusions and free oneself from attachment, but the artist’s …