Jin Seok Kim is really a versatile artist with unique style, which he successfully imposes with completely different media of visual expression. What is more the shapes and color density are essentially connected to the 

visible topic of his creativity. The fact that we observe easily his works and that it seems to us that they were painted easily, can, of course, deceive both the observer and critic. Namely, if we have in mind that on the visible plan as thematic blocks there are orchids, vases, porcelain vases with flowers, then there is even more possibility that we will fail to see the essential value of his certainly valuable work of art.

The artist takes as a visible topic the orchid flowers and porcelain vases, but when we try to see through the semantic plan of the work we see that the topic serves the semantics; the theme is not the goal but an instrument with which the artist reaches his goals.

The nature of the instrument, as material, tells a lot about its goal. What is the nature of the thematic blocks of Jin Seok Kim? We, of course, talk about the painter who longs for perfection, who longs for unreachable, or at least unreachable out of the art. As the old count Bolkonsky in "The War and Peace" says that only the unreachable is close to him, we can also say for the creativity of the painter from South Korea that it has the same universal goal.

In conversation with younger art critics about the Kim's work, when I stated the recent thesis, they told me: "Yes, but it is a characteristic of the Asian painting." Naturally, the social, cultural and historical milieu affects the creativity of any artist and it is not controversial. But what makes the artist special is exactly his style, the capability to raise above any goal and give to his work that universal attributes which are no more connected to space and time. In that sense, if the search for perfection is "the specialty" of the Asian art, then I have to notice that people from other meridians posses the same search. The thing is that someone comes close to that goal and at the same time succeeds to bring it closer to us, and someone does not succeed in it. If the Kim's work provokes the powerful feeling of perfection in us, then the artist has certainly succeeded in his primary intention and has realized his aesthetic goal.

In that sense, I have a privilege to recommend to you a really great artist, who comes from a different tradition, from a different cultural milieu, but, because of that, you have a chance to see how the first-class art, no matter the part of the world it comes from, is in close contact according to its universal values.

© Nikola Kitanovic, 2002