Kumho Museum of Art presents Seeun Kim’s solo exhibition 《Submersible》 from April 1 to May 5.
Seeun
Kim has continuously explored the visual dynamism triggered by her experiences
in urban environments and translated it into the language of painting. Growing
up in a newly developed city, the artist naturally developed a keen eye for
planned urban landscapes, residential zones, civil engineering structures, and
landscaped areas. As mountains are carved away and new constructions emerge,
the city space repeatedly undergoes cycles of building and supplementation,
continuously reshaping itself. Kim observes these structural and visual systems
of the city, paying particular attention to the “nameless” spaces that
remain—voids, tunnels, bridges—spaces that appear to be nothing, yet fill and
connect the edges of large surfaces, forming fragmented landscapes.
For the artist, these spaces are dense with potential for visual
movement. They do not remain static or limited to a singular frame, but instead
provoke a sculptural imagination that expands beyond a fixed cross-section. A
central question in her practice is: with what attitude and posture should one
look at such scenes? Kim consistently seeks to engage the body in the act of
seeing. She deliberately manipulates the physical relationship between herself
and the subject by zooming in or out, much like adjusting a camera’s angle to
view the city. This oscillation—sometimes closely inspecting a subject and at
other times stepping back to see it in relation to its surroundings—becomes a
method through which she explores spatial structures and their formal movement,
ultimately capturing them on the pictorial plane.
The process of building painterly space by layering pigment on a
flat surface, too, naturally begins with the body. Kim observes the visual
characteristics of urban environments through the conditions and limitations of
her own body—sometimes confronting them, other times expanding beyond them. The
structures and relationships shown in Kim’s paintings stem from real,
experienced time-spaces and thus retain the attributes of actual cities.
However, what she seeks to portray is not a mere urban landscape, but rather
the posture of her own body in relation to space and the forms that arise from
that encounter.
In 《Submersible》, Kim presents new works created specifically for the exhibition
alongside pieces from various periods. The expressive qualities of the works
differ significantly across time, reflecting how changes in her environment
subtly alter the posture her body adopts in response to space. She attentively
senses these shifts and continues to construct new visual languages within
painting to articulate these changes.
The role of the viewer’s body becomes especially crucial at the
stage of appreciation. Thus, the spatial configuration of the exhibition is
designed to evoke an active sensory and physical engagement. A series of
structural elements composed of different materials introduce visual tension
and encourage viewers to engage more consciously with the works. In the inner
gallery, a steel structure guides the viewer’s gaze through a forward-oriented
layout of the paintings. On the floor of the outer gallery, aluminum plates are
used to create a contrasting experience—cool in materiality and reflective in
effect, they suppress the typical warmth and solidity of the gallery space and
invoke a new sensory awareness.
