Art Sonje Center will present exhibitions by the recipients of the Daum Prize for the next three years starting in 2012, co-organized with the Parkgeonhi Foundation. As the first of these exhibitions, the Center is hosting 《Healing Water》, a solo exhibition by Sangdon Kim, the winner of the 10th Daum Prize.

The Daum Prize is a young artist support program established by the Parkgeonhi Foundation in 2002. Each May, through an open call, the prize selects a young Korean artist working with photography as a primary medium. The winner receives production support for one year and presents the results in an exhibition and publication the following year. Over the past decade, the Daum Prize has become a major gateway for emerging artists in Korea.

Through the portfolios submitted each year, one can now identify the trends and currents shaping Korean photography. Notably, beginning with this 10th anniversary exhibition, hosting the show at Art Sonje Center significantly expands the scope of institutional support and enhances the prestige of the award.

Within the context of contemporary art, Sangdon Kim has worked fluidly across photography, sculpture, installation, performance, and video. His perspective—too inventive and imaginative to be described merely as keen observation—has allowed viewers to reconsider the everyday realities of contemporary society through series such as Rose Island (2009), Bulkwang-dong Totem (2010), Ambush (2010), and Solveig’s Song (2011).

The images he gathers consistently reveal overlooked landscapes, marginal scenes, and objects charged with subtle tension, enabling viewers to sense the fundamental energies and latent frictions embedded within Korean society.

The work presented in this exhibition, Healing Water (2012), explores landscapes and energies that the artist encounters in peculiar configurations within his everyday environment. In Kim’s practice, water becomes both a luxury afforded by modern processes of development and purification, and a symbol of desire and life rooted in deep local traditions.

The strange vistas produced by the collision of reality and history within mundane space-time reveal a sharp social satire. Although this skewed sense of irony continues the trajectory of his earlier works, here it resonates with heightened significance due to the symbolic weight of water as a life-giving force.

References

• 《약수 (Healing Water)》