Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs. Art is not a race. Art is not a sprint. Art is certainly not this frantic charade where gallerists sell you the latest phenomenon before the paint has even dried. Art, my dear friends, can be a journey of thirty years spent on a single canvas, as Kang Myonghi did with her masterpiece “The Time of Camellias”.
Yes, you heard right. Thirty, long, years. Forgive me, but this number deserves to be emphasized. In a world where your attention is measured in milliseconds by marketing professionals, where your favorite artists produce like machines to satisfy your insatiable appetite for novelty, Kang Myonghi spent three decades on a single work. And you know what? This extraordinary woman, born in 1947 in Daegu, South Korea, simply declared: “I obey time” [1]. Not “I manipulate time”, not “I master time”, but “I obey time”. What humility in the face of this resource that we all squander as if it were infinite!
This relationship to time is not without recalling the philosophy of Henri Bergson, for whom experienced time, “duration”, is qualitatively different from the time measured by our clocks. Bergson speaks of a time that unfolds organically, that stretches and contracts according to our inner perception [2]. Kang Myonghi literally embodies this Bergsonian conception in her artistic practice. When she declares: “I let my hands be those of time” [3], she expresses this voluntary submission to this organic temporal flux that Bergson describes, to this duration that escapes all external measure.
Kang’s painting is the very antithesis of our era obsessed with immediacy. It defies our irrepressible need for instant results. Her canvas “The Time of Camellias”, begun in the 1980s in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, abandoned for a decade, then resumed on the Korean island of Jeju in 2007, was not completed until 2017. As Bergson explains in “Creative Evolution”, “the more we deepen the nature of time, the more we understand that duration means invention, creation of forms, continuous elaboration of the absolutely new” [4]. Each brushstroke of Kang Myonghi fits into this creative duration, in this experienced time that has nothing to do with the abstract time of physicists.
The French philosopher taught us to distinguish spatial, quantitative, divisible time into measurable units, from the time of consciousness, qualitative and indivisible. Kang Myonghi seems to navigate exclusively in the latter. “I really can’t explain”, she says about her creative process, “I just felt that this painting had to be done this way. I trusted the moment – to know the right moment for me to paint the different parts until I finished” [5]. This way of creating perfectly reflects what Bergson calls intuition, this method that consists of “thinking in duration” rather than in terms of analyzable space.
There is something incredibly radical in this approach, especially today. While the contemporary art world is driven by fairs, biennials, auctions and ephemeral trends, Kang Myonghi works in a different temporal register. She is not concerned with your commercial cycles or your passing fashions. She operates in a temporality that is her own, a temporality where a work can mature over three decades.
But do not be mistaken: Kang Myonghi is not a recluse. She exhibited at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris as early as 1986, at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul in 1989, and at the Beijing Art Museum in 2011. Her works are known and respected by a circle of initiates, as former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin points out, describing her as “a jewel known only to initiates” [6]. And what still keeps an artist like Kang Myonghi in our collective consciousness, you might ask? The answer is simple: gallerists like the de Villepin family, these rare species on the verge of extinction in our mercantile artistic ecosystem.
The father-son duo, Dominique and Arthur, defend Kang Myonghi’s work in their Hong Kong gallery with a fervor that takes me back to the heroic era when Dina Vierny supported her Russian artists against all odds, or when the Jaeger family of the Galerie Jeanne Bucher put all their means and reputation at the service of Nicolas de Staël or Maria Helena Vieira da Silva. This almost monastic devotion to an artist, not to a trend, not to a market, but to a singular vision, is a species on the verge of extinction in our contemporary artistic jungle. Seeing Dominique successfully pass on this sacred flame to his son Arthur, who perpetuates this artistic priesthood in Hong Kong with stunning integrity, is something jubilant. While we live in an artistic world where everything seems to be for sale, including convictions, these guardians of the temple remind us why this profession of gallerist is serious, and above all, precious. Yes, despite everything, for artists, the future still has a chance.
Let us now turn to the work itself. If Kang Myonghi’s relationship to time evokes Bergson, her aesthetic approach resonates with the visual poetry of Cy Twombly. This comparison is not fortuitous: like Twombly, Kang Myonghi is also a poet, and her two mediums allow her to “capture the world around her, reconstructing its cartography through metaphysical forms of representation” [7].
Kang Myonghi’s paintings, with their bursts of vibrant colors and atmospheric compositions, recall the way Twombly incorporated textual and pictorial elements to create works that oscillate between writing and painting. The art critic and poet Roland Barthes wrote about Twombly that his work was like “a writing that has risen, that has detached itself from its instrumental base” [8]. Similarly, Kang Myonghi’s paintings seem to be poems that have risen from the page to become emotional landscapes, cartographies of the soul.
Kang Myonghi’s artistic practice presents striking parallels with Twombly’s approach. The poet and critic Alain Jouffroy, who knew and supported Kang Myonghi, could just as well have been speaking about Twombly when he evokes this “search for truth, light and harmony” that characterizes the Korean artist’s work [9]. Both artists transform their experience of the world into visual traces that defy strict categorization. Is it abstract? Is it figurative? These questions lose their relevance in the face of works that impose themselves by their immediate presence, by their ability to evoke emotions and memories.
When Kang Myonghi categorically states “I have never painted abstract” [10], she joins Twombly in this refusal of reductive labels. Both artists create works that, while apparently non-figurative at first glance, are deeply rooted in the real world, in a lived experience of the environment. As Dominique de Villepin explains about Myonghi: “What is very interesting in her way of looking at the world and looking at nature, whether it’s the Gobi Desert or simply the garden next door, is the importance given to time. She will look at the same landscape at different times of the day, then try to paint and capture the sum of all these different moments” [11].
This approach echoes the way Twombly drew inspiration from Mediterranean landscapes, classical mythology and poetry to create works that are not literal representations but sensory and emotional evocations. Both artists show us that the most powerful art is not that which imitates or illustrates, but that which embodies, that which makes the experience live.
This poetic dimension is essential to understand Kang Myonghi’s work. Poetry, like Myonghi’s painting, distills experience, extracts its essence. Her paintings never represent a specific scene, but rather “an amalgam of views, memories and sensations” [12]. As she explains: “Each moment, from when I wake up to the moment I start working, is part of the painting. And memories, maybe from 10 years ago, looking at camellias, for example, will also be integrated” [13].
This holistic approach makes each canvas a microcosm, a universe in itself where time condenses into colors and forms. “There is no figurative way to express what I paint”, she says. “It’s the accumulation of observation, trying to capture the sky, for example, and really capture the ‘whole’, rather than a specific camellia or a certain rock” [14].
It is easy to see why her works resonate so deeply with those who take the time to contemplate them. In a world saturated with instant and disposable images, Myonghi’s paintings offer a rare experience: that of condensed time, of sustained attention, of authentic presence. They invite us to slow down, to observe, to be fully present.
It is perhaps for this reason that Kang Myonghi has been able to remain relatively apart from the art market while maintaining deep respect in academic and artistic circles. She has never sought recognition or commercial success. Her work has always been guided by an inner necessity, by this intimate dialogue with time and nature.
I am particularly struck by the intensity of her creative process. “I simply look at the paintings and feel that they are not finished. And that can even make it difficult to sleep”, she confides. “They are always moving and progressing, and sometimes I never have the feeling that they are finished. Sometimes, I would like to be able to have a drink and forget all that, but it is not possible. I always need to try to resolve the little things that I see every day in front of me” [15].
And then, as if by magic, the compulsion to sign, and thus to finish, a painting strikes her “like a lightning bolt”, she says. “It’s not something I plan or know rationally. It’s spontaneous” [16]. This moment of resolution, after years or even decades of questioning and work, must be extraordinarily liberating.
Kang Myonghi is an artist who has lived between two worlds, Korea and France, but who has found her universal language. Her work transcends cultural and linguistic borders to speak to us about what is truly important: our relationship to time, to nature, to ourselves. In a world in crisis, where beauty sometimes seems eclipsed by violence and destruction, her paintings vibrate with a quiet joy, a celebration of life in all its nuances.
Arthur de Villepin, co-founder of their gallery in Hong Kong, describes this unique quality perfectly: “For me, she is the Joan Mitchell of Asia. There is no other woman of her generation, apart from Yayoi Kusama in Japan, who has such historical validation” [17]. This comparison with Joan Mitchell is particularly relevant. Like Mitchell, Kang Myonghi creates emotional landscapes that capture not the external appearance of nature, but its internal impact on the human soul.
Moreover, both artists share this ability to transform their life experience, including trials and sufferings, into works of striking beauty. “In her works, I see the struggle and the pain, but I see the beauty and I see the decision to believe in hope”, affirms Arthur de Villepin [18]. This alchemical transformation of experience into beauty is perhaps the highest function of art.
So, the next time you find yourself rushing from one art fair to another, consuming works like fast food, remember Kang Myonghi, her peaceful obstinacy, her absolute devotion to her art. Remember that a single one of her canvases contains thirty years of life, of observation, of questioning. Remember that the deepest art is not always the loudest or the most visible.
And perhaps, just perhaps, you will learn to “obey time” too, to slow down, to observe, to live fully. For if Kang Myonghi’s art teaches us anything, it is this: true beauty is not found in hurry, but in patient attention, in active contemplation, in silent communion with the world around us.
- Holland, Oscar. “‘I obey time’: The artist who spent three decades on a single painting”, CNN Style, October 21, 2021.
- Bergson, Henri. “Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience”, Félix Alcan, 1889.
- Holland, Oscar. “‘I obey time’: The artist who spent three decades on a single painting”, CNN Style, October 21, 2021.
- Bergson, Henri. “L’Évolution créatrice”, Félix Alcan, 1907.
- “Korean Artist Myonghi Kang’s Poetic Paintings Are Reminiscences of the Natural World”,
Artnet Gallery Network, May 24, 2021. - “Myonghi Kang”, Kwai Fung Hin on kwaifunghin.com, accessed March 3, 2025.
- “Myonghi Kang”, Villepin Art on villepinart.com, accessed March 1, 2025.
- Barthes, Roland. “Cy Twombly: Works on Paper”, in “The Responsibility of Forms”, Hill and Wang, 1985.
- “Myonghi Kang: Requiem”, villepinart.com, accessed March 1, 2025.
- “Myonghi Kang On Nature, Painting And Perspective”, Kaitlyn Lai for Vogue Hong Kong, April 23, 2024.
- Ibid.
- Holland, Oscar. “‘I obey time’: The artist who spent three decades on a single painting”, CNN Style, October 21, 2021.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- “Myonghi Kang’s art finds long-awaited recognition in Villepin exhibit”, Yim Seung Hye for the Korea JoongAng Daily, November 8, 2023.
- Ibid.
