What the Eyes Can’t See

The delicate brush strokes and subtle tones of paintings on the walls of Mumbai’s Sakshi Gallery resonate the artist’s gentle demeanour. Yet,in truth,Kim Seola’s works that are part of her first solo exhibition in India,titled “Momentary Sonorant”,reflect on her agitated childhood and the calm she brought into her life eventually. “As an artist,I hope to use the energies and memories of my own life and direct them to a suitable purpose,” says Seola,a South Korean.

“My ideas about life come from a philosophical space that embraces me from within,” says the 30-year-old Vadodara-based artist. When she was a student in South Korea’s Chonnam National University,she was keen to explore the area of experimental art practices. Her teachers,having themselves studied at Kolkata’s Santiniketan,encouraged her to pursue contemporary art in India. The move to India in 2009 proved to be creatively stimulating. “I began taking objects — minute details of fabric on a chaise lounge or dried jasmines in a gajra — and painting them with precision. And those became the starting point for my recent work,” she says.