Installation view of 《An Artist’s Living room》 © Hart Gallery

A small gallery in Seochon was transformed into Eum Kixung’s studio and living room. Over the course of four days, the artist repeatedly installed and rearranged works in the exhibition space according to his own mental images and perspective. Inspired by Nam June Paik’s TV Buddha, Hommage to PAIK is a work that screens documentation of this four-day installation process.

Viewers sit on a heavy blue ceramic chair in front of the TV—a chair with an unstable quality—and, while watching the installation process unfold in the video, share the artist’s time and space where creation and anguish coexist.

A chandelier hung with McDonald’s vintage souvenirs that the artist collected with affection, and the red neon sign reading “VANDALISM” inscribed on mother-of-pearl cabinet doors standing like a folding screen, convey the issues that have recently drawn the artist’s interest.

The mother-of-pearl doors, chandelier, TV, and other elements were all picked up by the artist in Itaewon (the artist says that he “shops” in places he himself calls “sectors”). The artist combines discarded or collected vintage objects with ceramics, his field of study, expanding them into new works. Furthermore, he crosses boundaries through various works that exclude clay altogether.

In the case of The Head, which takes as its motif a traditional mask with a strong first impression, the artist creates the face in cold ceramic material, while expressing the glittering eyes through warm light, presenting a heterogeneous harmony.

He is in the process of unfolding through his work materials that are not easily categorized, such as ceramics and experimentation, tradition and vintage, discarded things and collections of taste; this exhibition is a time-space exhibition that reveals this ongoing process.

“My work represents my current state of mind. It may be an unknown story that I myself, someone who cannot be precisely defined, have not yet recognized, or that I may never reach in the future.”

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