EXHIBITION

ARTIST STATEMENT

It took seven years to come back to Korea since I quit painting and left my mother country with despair. When I attended a graduate school, I was massively disheartened by prevalent corruption, sexism, and cronyism in the Korean art world. I traveled in the Asian countries and sometimes worked at various places including slaughter house in Australia. For some personal reasons, I had to returned to Korea and was awakened by Max Weber’s term, ‘die Berufung’, my true calling. Since 2010, I have been working as full-time artist.
Since then, what I have tried to accomplish was to convey the questions that continuously intrigued my thought process. Rather than explaining or even persuading viewers of my work, I am trying the viewer viscerally sense the questions I am asking through my works. I do believe many of contemporary arts have lost connection with viewers because artists try to theoretically conceptualize their philosophical implications of their works. As a result, the contemporary art has often neglected a basic function of art: unspoken communication or conversation of common empathy with viewers who are often overburdened by abstract and metaphorical application.
My works illustrate such approach. In our socio-economic system, many things including abandoned building, used clothes, plants in the construction sites are dumped and neglected not because they could not function as designed and designated but because people believe they lost certain use, value, and/or efficiency. EVENT HORIZON was created with few remaining plants from the land which was cleared for construction. Viewers could see, through a key of rust iron door, the plants slowly dying. Dumped clothes was used for GOOD CITIZEN I, II, & III to depict contemporary culture of consumerism where out of fad items were materially terminated in the system although its functionality is still there and we face the issues environment and ecology. In the BRIGHT FUTURE, bleach is regularly dropped on the used clothes hung and natural color of the fabric is revealed. Artificial lawn and timer light was installed under manhole cover of rain sewer for STEP PASSED ME where the manhole cover was being used as trash bin for cigarette butts. Venus face was cut off and knife was displayed inside head (UNFACED/2017). Jesus statue with razor blades (UNTITLED/2017) uses rather standardized metaphor but intentionally limits view from certain angles due to hanging razor blades. These two projects was inspired by foreign factory workers attending a church near by the art residency where I was working.

By Yoonah Kim


시스템이라는 테두리 안에서 개인의 사적 기억과 감정이 수치화 되고 조직화 되는 과정에서 유실되는 것들의 가치 문제를 환기시키는 것에 관심을 가져온 나의 작업은, 존재와 부재라는 명제를 시각적으로 형상화시켜오는 작업에 주안점을 두게 했고, 나아가서는 존재와 부재 사이와 틈을 주요 화두로 삼아오고 있다.
사이와 틈은 하나의 섬이자 영정이다.

나의 설치 작업과 회화의 오버랩은 바로 이 지점 그 간극을 파고든다.

몇년전 부산의 모 레지던시에 입주해 있을때 거리에서 우연히 멈춰선 헌옷 수거함 밖으로 삐죽 튀어나온 버려진 셔츠의 소맷부리 앞에서 서성이다 그 한벌의 셔츠를 작업실로 가지고 온것이 계기가 되어 이후 약 2톤 가까운 헌옷을 수집하게 되었다.

수집된 헌옷들은 '모범시민' 이라는 타이틀로 몇차례 발표된 적이 있다.
'모범시민'은 자본주의 사회에서 생산성을 갖추지 못함으로써, 또는 기능과 효용을 다해 자연스럽게 폐기되고 마는 현실적인 지점을 직시하면서 구체화된 작업으로 아트포럼리에서 개최되는 개인전 'The warmest color, gray' 에서는 드로잉과 페인팅 작업 및 탈색과 염색이 반복된 헌옷을 이용한 'Someone nobody' 설치작업을 선보일 예정이다.