“Self-portrait” (1978) is one of several self-portraits Lim produced during the 1970s. By drawing an image of himself in triplicate standing before a blue stage-like background, Lim Ok-sang dramatizes the boundaries between inactivity and activity, the real and the surreal. Lim recalls that he was extremely pained by the oppressive social situation at the time and wanted to express a sense of relentless resistance and tenacity against the circumstances by multiplying himself. “I wanted to shut my eyes. I didn’t want to see things that I didn’t want to see or hear things that I didn’t want to hear. I just wanted to escape within, within myself. But I couldn’t. I had to open my eyes. I had to open my eyes and look straight at it.” Like the words of the artist, this work is filled with the anguish Lim went through to face reality and not turn away.
Lim Ok-sang (b. 1950, pen name Hanbaram) received his bachelor’s degree from the Department of Painting at Seoul National University in 1972, where he also received his master’s degree in 1974. He graduated from the EESI Angouleme-Poitiers in France in 1986. Throughout his artistic career, he has held numerous solo exhibitions, both domestic and international, including “Hanbaram” at ARKO Art Center in 1981; “Landscape of Our Times” at Ondara Museum in 1990; “Rising Land” at Gana Art, Seoul, and Galerie Gana-Beaubourg, Paris, in 1995; “In the Spirit of Renaissance: Lim Ok-sang” at The Alternative Museum (TAM), New York, in 1997; “A Song of Water and Fire,” Korea Art Gallery in 2001; “Total Art-Water, Fire, Wind, Flesh, Steel” at Gana
Art Center in 2011; and “The Wind Rises” at Gana Art Center and CMay Gallery, Los Angeles, in 2017. He has also participated in group exhibitions, both domestic and international, including “Controversial Artists” at Seoul Art Museum from 1983 to 1984; “Minjoong Art: A New Cultural Movement from Korea” at Artists Space, New York, in 1988; “Anti-apartheid” at the Hangaram
Art Museum of Seoul Arts Center in 1991; “Mountains and Rivers of Mother Land” at Seoul Museum of Art in 1997; “Spirit of May: Missing” at Gwangju Museum of Art in 2001; and “The 1980s Realism and the Age” at Gana Art Center in 2001; “The 30th Anniversary Exhibition of Reality and Utterance” at Insa Art Center in 2010; “GanaArt Collection Anthology” at Seoul Museum
of Art in 2016; and “Regrettable Times” at Seoul Museum of Art and “Jeju Culture Festival in Memory of April Flowers” at Arario Museum, Jeju Island, in 2018. In addition, Lim has served as a professor at Gwangju National University of Education and Jeonju University, and as are presentative on the Korean People’s Arts Association.
After participating in the “December Exhibition” with his Seoul National University colleagues in 1974, Lim Ok-sang renounced abstract painting and started to focus on works that criticized social reality from a historical perspective. As a founding member of Reality and Utterance since 1979, he has long been a major artist known for his activity with the Minjung arts community. The decline of rural societies due to rapid industrialization and the difficulties faced by farmers and laborers have been reflected in his work since the late 1970s. By showing the rampant development of the “earth” that has been the Korean people’s source of life and the basis for their history, Lim has sought to warn audiences about the threat of industrialization. Not only did Lim Ok-sang deal with various social issues during the politically and socially tumultuous 1980s, but he also expanded his scope in the 1990s to cover issues arising from inter-Korean division. In addition, he started to work with mud as a medium to depict the sociological implications of the earth underneath us and express his abiding interest in the land. More recently, he has demonstrated the social role of the arts through interventions at historical sites and socially controversial areas resulting in works such as the “Seodaemun Prison Project” (1999) and “A Million People” (2018).
