Myung-Bo Sim (1940-2021) is a world-renowned painter from Korea who focuses on roses. We are showing over 14 original paintings and 9 lithographs that highlight the flexibility of roses with luminous colors that burst with energy and vitality, painted in the late 1990s. With his refined details, Sim emphasizes the sensual layers of the rose as it unfolds, creating a sense of dynamism that suggests the roses are blossoming forth with life. His paintings primarily feature the highlights of his rose garden, exploring light, shape, and color as well as the more ephemeral and timeless qualities of the rose and how it complements even the most mundane things.
In his rose garden, the artist strives to paint beyond the traditional tableaux of flowers on canvas. Beyond the expected shape and beyond the realm of roses as objects, Sim attempts to fill the garden he paints with a panorama of feelings that transcends and compliments the physical beauty of the rose. The rose is a sensual, fantastical, and romantic object which the artist feels can not be captured by language but only through the feelings of a palette. The artist describes the rose as a confessional source— “a rose haunted by a human spirit who pleads beyond the garden.” Over time the personification of the rose lends an ambiguous embrace of passion and evolving shifts of the artist's mind and experience.
