Throughout his long career in art, Po Kim (1917-2014) approached painting with unabated vigor and intensity, reveling in the act of painting. Even when well into his nineties, he maintained a prodigious output, displaying a remarkable inventiveness and complexity of vision. However, in the latter part of 2011 a serious fall and its aftereffects led to the necessity of dialysis treatments three times a week. Ultimately, he spent the majority of his time in a wheelchair. Nevertheless, Po Kim was determined to sustain his passion for art and productivity, creating a group of paintings that continued, and even built upon, various methods and motifs that he had developed over the years. The energy, activity, and bright colors of many of these works utterly belie the circumstances behind their making.

The artist could still work on small paintings without assistance, and a number of these actively brushed pieces are in this exhibition. However, he had long preferred to make large paintings, including quite expansive multiple-panel compositions comprising three or four canvases, sometimes sixteen feet or more in width. Instead of withdrawing or holding back, Kim decided to maintain this format in many of his last works. He affixed charcoal to long poles to reach the canvas while sitting. At times he worked directly on the canvases (he could stand, though with difficulty and with an attendant). Often he would direct helpers to apply strips of colorful commercial tape onto his canvases, a technique he had been personally using for several years, moving them around until he was satisfied with their pictorial position.

Po Kim continued to produce work in styles that were recognizably part of the continuum of personal abstract shapes and techniques he had developed. There are paintings whose surfaces are activated by welters of dripped paint, whether as long, massed runnels, or even simulacra of the delicate descent and spatter of light rain emerging from bright blue clouds. Another painting's imagery features the linear tape motifs, with a studio ladder (a favored motif) at the right and a double, irregular band of blue creating a path from bottom to top -- from earth to heaven, perhaps. Other paintings present the viewer with the artist's frequent combination of overlapping techniques -- washes, long strokes, spatters, smears -- to form a complex field of interacting color and form. Overall, the balance of technical verve and thoughtfulness of image played out as it had for many years. The phrase "indomitable spirit" has become something of a cliché, but it seems to be fully applicable to the impetus behind the final works of Po Kim. One of the first paintings Kim completed upon returning home after his hospital stay retains the artist's trademark vivacity -- a very large four-panel format glowing with washes and splashes of bright colors in tape and paint contrasting with agitated geometry. In acknowledgement of -- and, in a sense, defiance of -- his profoundly altered physical situation, Kim titled this work "A New Life." This work is now in the collection of Chosun University in South Korea.

Po Kim passed away on February 7, 2014. This exhibition -- which includes multiple- and single-panel works, several small paintings, and video excerpts documenting Po Kim working on these last pieces serves as a one-year memorial, and honors the artist's life through the perspective of his final creations.