Chanmo KANG

Familiar with Western art, which he studied at university, Kang Chan Mo was also enamoured with Western philosophy. He explored the complex paths of the relationship between form and line, colour and space, but, in a way, something was missing in this approach. But it is difficult to say what is missing before having found or encountered what precisely cancels this lack.

Western thought makes lack something whose grasp or possession would confer on life a finally stable unity. It is different in Eastern thought, in particular when it refers to Buddhism. Lack is not associated with something that one should try to grasp, to possess, but with a way of seeing the world and of experiencing the relationship between oneself and the universe.

Art in the West in the 20th century is linked to the thought deployed by phenomenology. The work is then thought of in terms of this horizon of consciousness on which things and the world appear. This horizon is the field of an essential experience, that of the encounter between the Self and the World. It happens that this encounter gives rise to ecstatic moments that make those who live them say that it is a fusion between the self and the world.

The multiple experiences made by artists, writers and poets, linked among others to Buddhism in the sixties, in the USA, Great Britain and France in particular, such as the artists of the "Beat Generation" of certain currents of the emerging pop culture and poets like Henri Michaux, have brought to Western artistic practice, oriental elements.

But, it is finally in the East itself, following the opening of the East towards the West which followed the end of the Second World War, that a renewal of oriental thought occurred in the field of artistic practices and painting in particular. Kang Chan Mo is a striking example of this profound movement which runs through art, in Korea in particular and of the richness which it carries.

Satori

In 2004, when he was already practicing meditation and had begun a return to Buddhism, Kang Chan Mo went to the Himalayas.

The magical power of the place, the immediate presence of the celestial vault, the chants of the monks, everything here participated in the encounter between these two incompatible dimensions, the smallness of man and the immensity of the universe.

Such an encounter did not leave indifferent a man as sensitive and as mentally prepared as Kang Chan Mo. By directly experiencing his smallness as a man in the face of the infinite grandeur of the universe, he felt deep within himself that the infinite was also in himself and he understood that he inhabited the universe as the universe inhabited him. This experience can be described as a kind of satori. That is to say, a true moment of awakening.

Long is the path that leads to awakening, anyone who has set out in search of if not "the way", at least "his" own way knows this. The moment of awakening is never predictable, even if it is perceived, like any essential encounter of the kind that happens between two people, as a sign of destiny.

The experience of satori can also be described as an experience that continues. It is then close to the experience of the child who learns to walk or write and who ends up realizing that what he has learned will forever change his way of being in the world. It is through a radical modification of his way of painting that this satori experienced in the heart of the Himalayas was translated for Kang Chan Mo.

The three aspects of the universe

Kang Chan Mo's current works are deployed along two axes that are plastically different but deeply complementary. In a large number of paintings, we are facing mountains, very high mountains since they are the peaks of the Himalayas. In these paintings, the white mountains are often in the distance and they are preceded by dark blue mountains.

The whole carries and reveals a sky of an intense and soft blue. In the paintings belonging to the second axis, it is the colours that dominate. We are then faced with a fairyland of colours.

They pass on the background of the canvas like cosmic clouds carrying in their heart an infinity of bubbles, also coloured, bubbles taking the form of small medallions in which are painted beings, figurines of animals, elephants, birds, fish, but also men or trees. In fact, all these pictorial elements are, in the space of the painting, stars that we would see up close and of which we would discover that they are like manifestations of earthly beings returned to the sky and become symbols, unless they are waiting for their imminent return to earth.

Some of these colourful works are carried by larger forms, broader gestures. It is then the Minwha tradition that is summoned carried by a dreamlike vision of universal energy. The movement of the mind towards variable and unstable things is here metamorphosed into a colourful flow in which these things participate. These works show that it is possible to take a step beyond temptation simply by accepting the colourful immensity as the dreamed form of the world.

And then there are paintings where the two universes meet and mingle. There, the cosmic sky meets the sky of meditation. The colours of awakening open onto the world of human expectations and the fusion between the two draws us into a new dimension, both visually and aesthetically.

It is then the terrible indifference, that of men for their fellow men, that of the sky for men, which is abolished. Kang Chan Mo's pictorial world is an open door to the world of the absolute and that is why some people cry when looking at his paintings.

The great circle of the sky

There is an insurmountable paradox in human existence. Linked to matter, the human mind is capable of conceiving the existence of something that surpasses it, envelops it and transports it to an unknown elsewhere. On the other hand, communicating this emotion is undoubtedly the most difficult thing there is. It is the pitfall on which humanity has always stumbled.

Art is this attempt to actively respond to this impossibility of sharing revelation or awakening.

If we return to the paintings that Kang ChanMo painted before his stay in the Himalayas, paintings under the influence of Western pictorial codes, we understand that he was already seeking to understand, to share and to soften the pain and anguish that each being experiences. Domestic or wild animals, proud but often whose bones are visible, Pieta, poor peasants, it is suffering humanity that he painted then, and with humanity the anguish of all living beings prey to doubt and death.

What the Himalayas revealed to him was that it was possible to soften suffering by trying to share an experience that was not only positive, but truly saving.

So let's look at his paintings again. The white mountain has a rendezvous with the midnight blue mountain and both have a rendezvous with the moon and the sun. These mountains are the purest and most direct manifestation of the inhospitable aspect of the original earth. These mountains speak the language of the beginnings, of that time millions of years ago, when the earth was uninhabitable. But these mountains also say something else. These peaks represent the highest in the world and therefore those that are closest to the sky. And there, the sky reveals itself to be inhabited by light. What Kang Chan Mo experienced was the proximity and direct communication between heaven and earth.

What he then began to paint was this evidence. It was therefore necessary for his painting to change. It was no longer necessary for him to represent the world or to stage human passions, but to open a door to revelation, to this absolute fact that is the unity of heaven and earth. After this experience, everything becomes possible.

Each painting has become no longer the observation of irreparable pain, but the celebration of an endless party. The simple and pure colours brought back into their strong symbolic dimension have become essential and each painting has become the direct means of transmitting the emotion experienced, because it is conceived as the place of manifestation of the positive forces of the universe.

Each painting painted by Kang Chan Mo after the Himalayas produces the same effect as a mandala, which is a transitory work whose function is to serve as a support for meditation and therefore to play a role in improving the lives of men.

When the goal is to pacify negative emotions, the colour used is white. When it comes to developing meditative experiences, the colour is yellow. When it comes to attracting favourable circumstances, the colour is red. When it comes to repelling internal and external obstacles, the colour is dark blue. These are the colours that dominate Kang Chan Mo's mountain paintings.

Each of his paintings is an act of spreading the positive effect of his experience. The meeting of the moon and the sun carried by a calm and soft blue gives most of these paintings a reassuring force.

Often large in size, they are constructed in such a way that the edges of the mountain on the right and left seem to seek to meet. In one of them, at the bottom right barely visible, a human silhouette. The character seems fascinated by this sky which is forming a protective circle.

What matters are of course the visual elements, the colours and the shapes, but above all it is the experience, both philosophical and profoundly human, of the awareness of the unity of the universe.

Kang Chan Mo is a painter of the absolute because he understood that the sky is close to us, that infinity is accessible by the outer eye as well as the inner eye.

The sky in his works is the pillow on which men can come and rest their heads. The mountains draw, by their ascending forms, the opening through which the direct experience of the existence of the invisible becomes possible.

By setting our gaze on Kang Chan Mo's paintings, we experience absolute time, this time whose clock is the universe, whose white mountains are the motionless needles, whose blue background is the visible manifestation. Together, they designate the central place of man, this being whose gaze oscillates between the sun and the moon, between the sky and the earth. He still has to become like Kang Chan Mo has become, the being who knows that the universe is the true house in which he is finally at home.

Jean-Louis Poitevin