Lim DONG-LAK

About his Art Observing Lim Dong-Lak’s abstract sculptures, one is immediately struck by two things: the purity and precision of the highly inventive geometric forms, and the smoothness of the polished metal and stone surfaces. Virtually Platonic in the stylization, his pieces are nevertheless endowed with a torque, holding tension within even as its exterior, so flawlessly sleek, reflect the variety and change of the “real” world outside itself. Certainly there is in much of Lim’s recent work a kind of hyper-modern utopian impulse. Pieces such as Point-The Gate of Space (2007), draw visual comprehensibility out of extreme physical and intellectual complexity. Maximum import in minimal form: this is a prime aspect of ideal beauty, especially in Asia. Designing such works on computer, Lim often conceives them on an architectural scale – as though he wished to envelope his viewers in art, to let them dwell perennially within the beautiful. Although many of Lim’s pieces, are large and heavy, they are in a sense entirely mobile. They can be placed anywhere, mirroring their environment to some degree, but remaining self-contained, autonomousm and resolved. Other works seek to become the environment, proposing order, harmony, and beauty as an infinitely sustainable state. In this, for all their futuristic appearance, they recall a very traditional Korean social ideal. But Lim never forgets the tensions subsumed in that outward orderliness. His most recent “architectural” sculptures employ visual counterpoints and mutually offsetting volumes. Though still, all Lim’s works are still moving – like creatures glimpsed at rest. Lim honors the core of his chosen art. For preceding all sculpture, no matter how abstract or geometric it may become, is the animistic sensation that great masses of stone and metal have a living presence – a life suffused within – which the sculptor strives to preserve and enhance, to make manifest. Artworks of Lim Dong - Lak are available at the Kálmá Show more