About

《Paper, Pencil, Eraser, Book》 takes its name from four objects that have always sat on the artist's desk. Yet these names point less to the objects themselves than to the act of drawing that happens with them. Waiting before a blank sheet, drawing a line in pencil, erasing it and drawing again: the time spent this way builds up in layers, like the pages of a book. In a world where new names pour out every day, the artist calls these old names once more and retraces what the work is made of. Kim Han-na has explored communication with others, adaptation to one's surroundings, and inner emotions through a relationship with an imaginary rabbit, expanding an artistic world that spans painting, drawing, sculpture, animation, and children's stories. In this exhibition, the artist sets that world aside for a moment and returns to the work of the hand through drawing and painting. For an artist who builds density on the surface with soft, layered lines and colors, drawing is a process of drawing, erasing, and drawing again more deeply over what was erased. The faint marks left by erasing and the time beneath the layers of paint appear in these works as traces of the path the practice has traveled. The rabbit, the artist's longtime companion, is also born from this time. A pencil line that runs straight, stops, and meets another path “in a place I never imagined / suddenly becomes a rabbit's ear.” The paintings are oil on canvas, and the artist's warm humor comes through in the titles alone. 〈Rabbit Pencil〉 and 〈Let's Draw a Road〉 touch on the moment when a road begins and a rabbit is born at the end of a pencil line, while 〈Pencil Scent Connoisseur〉 captures even the smell of a pencil, so familiar that it usually goes unnoticed. 〈You'll Miss Out If You Don't Read〉, 〈The Advance of Reading〉, and 〈Study〉 evoke the time spent opening a book and turning its pages one by one. The soft layers of color, built up in coat after coat of oil paint, record on the canvas the time it takes for a painting to deepen, layer by layer, rather than being finished all at once. The drawings combine colored pencil, oil pastel, and acrylic on paper. The fine lines of colored pencil, the texture of oil pastel that spreads as it is rubbed, and the flat planes of acrylic laid over them overlap on a single sheet. These works, which preserve the movements of a hand drawing, rubbing, and covering with materials of different natures, offer the closest view of the paper and pencil in the exhibition's title. The exhibition catalog features a preface by poet Oh Eun, written in the form of a children's poem. The poem's unhurried rhythm, with space left between its lines, echoes the pace of this exhibition, in which a line is drawn and a page is turned. The poem written in words and the pictures drawn by hand reflect each other, opening another way to read the exhibition. 《Paper, Pencil, Eraser, Book》 is an exhibition that looks again at what has always been close by rather than adding something new. Following a hand as it draws a line, erases it once, and draws again, visitors discover that the world of “Hanna and the Rabbit” began with a single line on paper. “Paper is still paper / A pencil is still a pencil / The eraser is wearing down / The book lies open / The rabbit is alive / And I draw.” — From the artist's notes by Kim Han-na