Kim Tschang-Yeul retrospective at MMCA Seoul reveals waterdrops as trauma response

A major posthumous retrospective of Kim Tschang-Yeul's work at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul presents the Korean artist's career through December 21. While widely associated with waterdrop paintings, the exhibition reveals these works as part of a broader artistic evolution rooted in wartime trauma. The show begins with Kim's Informel period paintings from the 1960s, including his Rite series, which curatorially connects to his personal history through a quote about losing classmates in the Korean War. After moving to New York in 1965, Kim developed geometric minimalist works in his Phenomenon and Procession series during the early 1970s. His breakthrough Waterdrops paintings first appeared in 1971-1972, featuring solitary droplets on monochromatic canvases. Throughout subsequent decades, Kim expanded the waterdrop motif across various materials including sand, graphite, and paper, while incorporating classical Korean text from the Cheonjamun poem in his Recurrence series during the mid-1980s. The exhibition includes three galleries of work spanning his career, with documentary film L'homme qui peint des gouttes d'eau (2021) providing context about his artistic process. Kim, who died in 2021, described painting water as a method to wash away memories, revealing the waterdrop as both aesthetic device and psychological coping mechanism.