Kimsooja's Current and Upcoming Exhibitions
Kimsooja: Planted Names, Axel Vervoordt Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium
Kimsooja, Planted Names, 2002. Woven Carpets. Courtesy Axel Vervoordt Gallery and Kimsooja Studio. Photo by Jan Liegeois
Kimsooja:
Planted Names
October 21, 2020 - January 9,
2021
Axel Vervoordt Gallery
Human rights, justice, and the state of displacement have long been one of the central themes to the work of Korean artist Kimsooja. Her practice involves constant travel, putting her in touch with various cultures and occasionally sites haunted by extreme violence. Such was the case when she produced the works Bottari - Alfa Beach (2001) and Planted Names (2002), which respond to sites historically associated with the transatlantic slave trade. These works are shown in the context of a summer of racial reckoning, during which global Black Lives Matter protests have continued the movement to fight institutional racism and address the afterlife of slavery. Kimsooja, Bottari - Alfa Beach, 2001. Single Channel Video, 6:18, Silent. Courtesy of Axel Vervoordt Gallery and Kimsooja Studio. Photo by Jan Liegeois
Bottari-Alfa Beach depicts the horizon of the Atlantic, seen from an island in South-West Nigeria which was once a slave port. The video, shot on a dissonantly bright, sparkling day, shows a vast ocean horizon inverted. The ocean moves in the upper portion and the sky in the lower, invoking an unsettling sense of the loss of natural cohesion.
“The inversion happened when I saw the horizon from the Alfa Beach in Nigeria where African slaves were sent across the Atlantic ocean—this was the saddest horizon line I had ever seen in my life, thinking of the destiny of the slaves and their deprived freedom. Thus the flipped horizon was, for me, a disturbed horizon, a disorientated sense of gravity and of the slaves' psychological return I perceived in the curls of the waves reaching the same shore from which they had left," Kimsooja said.
The inversion calls to mind the words of Black feminist scholar Hortense Spillers, who, writing on the Middle Passage, describes “African persons […] suspended in the ‘oceanic,’ [...] removed from indigenous land and culture and not-yet ‘American’ either, [they] were in movement across the Atlantic, but they were also nowhere at all. [...] they were culturally ‘unmade,’ thrown in the midst of a figurative darkness that ‘exposed’ their destinies to an unknown course.” The disrupted horizon image reflects this cultural unmaking, the loss of home and identity through an institution whose violence continues to this day.
“I immediately saw this plantation site as a vast woven carpet where enslaved bodies were embedded. There are so many sad and inhumane stories behind these colonial places. Carpets are not about the beauty of an artist’s design, but about the labour of the carpet weaver, so I chose carpets as the form to celebrate both the slaves’ and the carpet weavers’ labour and time,” Kimsooja stated.
Visitors can see three Bottari sculptures which were made in Perth, Australia using locally sourced used clothing and blankets wrapped by traditional Korean bed covers. A bottari (the Korean word for bundle) is usually employed during times of movement, used to transport domestic possessions connected to daily life. Situated at the intersection of sculpture, painting, and installation, the works represent the very idea of displacement and itinerancy. A physical embodiment of ‘home’ uprooted, it is an object laden with experience, memory, and social and existential meaning. By using bed covers to wrap the Bottaris, the objects become sites unto themselves; they are “the underlying theatre for birth and death, one that each and every one of us regards as our own place,” as said by curator Harald Szeemann. At the same time, Bottaris are intimate works that organise the disorder of existence on a micro level, responding aesthetically to the turbulence and chaos of migration. Kimsooja wraps Bottaris in the pursuit of co-existence, love, harmony, non-violence, and a utopia in this troubled world. The embrace of the “other,” the transcultural idea that we are all “woven” together, is foundational to her work, indeed the reason why she adopted a one-word name was that it “refuses gender identity, material status, socio-political or cultural and geographical identity”. Kimsooja offers us an interpretation of today's world, promoting metaphysical, cultural, and political awareness through art.
Kimsooja: Sowing into Painting, Wanas Foundation, Sweden
Sowing into Painting, 2020. Work in progress at Wanås Konst. Courtesy Wanås Konst and Kimsooja Studio. Photo by Mattias Givell
Kimsooja:
Sowing into Painting
May 9, 2020 - November 1,
2020
Wanås
Foundation - Wanås Konst, Sweden
Artistic Direction: Elisabeth Millqvist & Mattias Givell
The Wanås Foundation presents Sowing Into Painting, a solo exhibition with site-specific installations, film, sculpture and painting by Kimsooja. Wanås Konst is a unique cultural foundation in Southern Sweden, composed of a sculpture park and art galleries on the site of a medieval castle and an organic farm. Kimsooja’s exhibition will incorporate the diversity of the location with newly-conceived works investigating the conceptual relationship between painting, agriculture, and textiles.
"Kimsooja’s approach to stillness has made her an artist we have long wanted to work with as a part of our interest in the qualities of the site and highlighting nature (...). The exhibition takes place during the Covid-19 pandemic, a time of emergency and restrictions. With the body as our basis for being in the world, the exhibition gives room for inaction and meditation on life and art. Her orientation as an artist naturally establishes a dialogue with everything that is going on; the artworks give space for introspection and spirituality beyond religion. She creates a focus on the present that we need right now." - Elisabeth Millqvist
The title for the exhibition, Sowing into Painting, is also the title of Kimsooja’s new planting project. With this new work, Kimsooja expands her perspective on the (agri)cultural, conceptual, and material significance of painting and textiles. Taking advantage of something unique to the site that most art museums cannot offer—the possibility of farming the land, she uses the agricultural planting field surrounding the Wanås Foundation to experiment and cultivate a field of flax plants, a gesture referencing her decades-long exploration into painting as a conceptual art form.
Kimsooja plants two different local varieties of flax that are used to generate linseed oil and linen. Growing flax pulls us back within art history to the flax fibers that were used to manufacture textiles including canvas and linseed oil that is the classic binding agent in artists’ oil paints. By planting a field of flax plants, she metaphorically encapsulates the entire cycle of material production and considers the interplay of impermanence and perpetuity, and of life and art. These plants, which are grown and harvested in a period of several months, will transform into paintings that could last for centuries. Sown at the end of April, the flax fields will grow and change over the course of the exhibition from green sprouts to stalks with sky-blue flowers and seeds. As well as being a physical source of painting materials, the field becomes a fluid tableau, covering the ground in a pattern akin to weaving the earth.
Sowing
into Painting is an expansion of the
artist’s long fascination with agriculture and painting, evident
in her series of Deductive
Object works
made in the early 90s by wrapping traditional farming tools from
Korea and the US in fragments of used clothing, as well as her
1988 painting Agriculture,
in which sewn and painted sections allude to abstraction and
agrarian land plots simultaneously, and the word 'Agriculture'
is written on the surface.
Meta-Painting, 2020. Raw linen canvas. Courtesy of Wanas Konst and Kimsooja Studio
In the Art Gallery space, Kimsooja presents Meta-Painting, a new series of large scale conceptual paintings, through raw canvases of linen, both stretched and folded like bottari, the Korean cloth bundles used to wrap belongings and that have become a characteristic element of her oeuvre with references to migration, displacement, and urgency, as well as a formalistic form that is a three dimensional painting, a sculpture, and an object. Relating to the Sowing into Painting planting project in the nearby fields, these works show the product of the textile process, embodying the full life cycle from seed to flax plant, then transformed into linen canvas and art object. These minimalist paintings link the materiality and structure of the canvases to Kimsooja’s early work as a painter, as seen in sewn and painted works of the 80s and early 90s, to her continuously evolving later work as a conceptual artist using principles of non-doing and non-making.
In
the centuries-old hay barn, Kimsooja presents To
Breathe, a mirrored floor installation,
reflecting and inverting the space. The high vaulted
characteristic ceiling and its myriad of supporting beams are
converted into a deep chasm, creating a disorienting effect as
one walks across its surface. This installation comes out of an
inquiry into mirrors as a conceptual investigation going back
over twenty years in Kimsooja’s practice, since the 1999 Venice
Biennale. On the other side of the building, which is more than
50 meters long, she has worked with stuffing fabrics in cracks
and holes in the stone wall, tracing back to her Deductive
Object made
in conjunction with her residence at MoMA PS1 1993. Her works
both occupy the room and leave it empty—the entire space becomes
an experience, with this experience being her artwork. She
allows the sensorial and conceptual dynamics latent in the
architecture to come forward, inviting visitors to look far away
and up close.
Thread Routes - Chapter II, 2011. Video still from 16mm film transferred into HD format. Courtesy of Kimsooja Studio
Referencing the century-long practice of the agricultural and textile production at Wanås Foundation, three of the six non-narrative chapters of Kimsooja’s first 16mm film series Thread Routes are shown in the Art Gallery. Started in 2010 and shot on five different continents, the films use textiles as a point of investigation into human life, culture, and the natural world.
In
the nearby sculpture park, Kimsooja creates A
Laundry Field, a new installation
extending from her A
Laundry Woman series.
Kimsooja’s oeuvre is associated with traditional South Korean
bedcovers, which she has used in several installations since
90’s. Here, she has instead chosen to work with old-fashioned
white sheets that in Sweden are traditionally embroidered with a
monogram or decorated with lace—a frame of life that are a part
of creating a home and that display care and reflection. Harald
Szeeman has described the sheets in Kimsooja’s oeuvre as a
"theater for birth and death, our ephemeral condition". In the
beech wood forest, the installation becomes a field of memories,
of textiles imbued with the body, the couple, the family.
Traversées\Kimsooja
Traversées\Kimsooja
October 12, 2019 - January 19, 2020
Poitiers, France
Artistic Direction: Emma Lavigne and Emmanuelle de
Montgazon
Kimsooja presents one of her most challenging and inspiring
projects at a brand new artistic and cultural event -
Traversées - lead by two artistic directors, Emma Lavigne
and Emmannuelle de Montgazon. Placing Poitiers on the
international art map, this is a new kind of project, a
city-wide "carte blanche" offered to one artist.
As part of the event, Kimsooja has invited some fifteen fellow artists, to include Tadashi Kawamata, Lee Mingwei, Min Tanaka, Thomas Ferrand, Subodh Gupta, Jung Marie, Stephen Vitiello and Rirkrit Tiravanija, amongst others, to observe the city and to contribute their own perspectives.
"To symbolically hand over the keys of Poitiers to Kimsooja is to accept that the city’s memories will be transformed into a space in which to imagine the future. But it is also to offer the artist the opportunity to re-frame her work, to imbed it in a new time and space, that of a city steeped in history" - E.L and E.dM
Thread Routes VI, 2019. © Ville de Poitiers
In the majestic Palace of the dukes of Aquitaine, a center of spirituality and contemporary culture, Kimsooja's Archive of Mind is conceived as a crossing of the City based on the very principles of co-existence and harmony that have inspired her work for over thirty years.
Inspired by Michel Foucault, who is native of Poitiers, and his definition of heterotopia, Kimsooja disperses space using light diffraction and mirrors in the different variations of her work To Breathe, transforming historical sites such as the Tour Maubergeon or the cloister of the Chapelle des Augustins into a sensory experience.
For an artist in a state of perpetual motion like
Kimsooja, and living in a society increasingly
sensitive to migratory patterns, Poitiers also takes
on the role of a place of refuge, somewhere to unpack
her Bottari, the Korean bundles that she uses to
transport her miniature world – whether made from
fabric, or in the form of a shipping container.
Co-produced by the City of Poitiers, Kimsooja presents, for the first time, her sixth chapter of Thread Routes, filmed in Morocco this year. After Peru, Europe, India, China, and North America, traveling is viewed as an experience of alterity and hospitality, echoing the “thoughts on borders and those living on the other side” that have led Kimsooja to “question the relationship between myself and the Other”.
"These 'traversées' will open our eyes to new paths
and will write a new chapter in this rich story, one
that will not only be recounted but lived and
shared, turning local residents and visitors alike
into wanderers, following the paths left by the
artists, routes that fork and multiply into a
disorienting infinity." E.L and E.dM
Emma Lavigne is a curator and art historian, the
former director of the Centre Pompidou-Metz and now
the President of the Palais de Tokyo, Paris.
Emmanuelle de Montgazon is an independent
international curator, born in Poitiers.
Traversées was initiated by Alain Claeys, mayor of
the City of Poitiers, and Henri Loyrette, former
director of the Louvre and Orsay museums.
INVITED ARTISTS
Sammy Baloji, Democratic Republic of the Congo / Belgium / Myriam Boucher, Canada / Compagnie l’Homme Debout, France / Ensemble 0, France / Taylor Deupree, USA / Thomas Ferrand, France / Subodh Gupta, India / Jung Marie, South Korea / Lenio Kaklea, France / Greece / Tadashi Kawamata, Japan / France / Kimsooja, South Korea / USA / France / Lee Mingwei, Taiwan / France / Min Tanaka, Japan / Tomoko Sauvage, France / Japan / Achilleas Souras, United Kingdom / Greece / Stephen Vitiello, USA / Rirkrit Tiravanija, Germany / Thailand
SITES IN POITIERS
Palais des ducs d’Aquitaine / TAP - Théâtre Auditorium de Poitiers / Maison de l’Architecture / Chapelle Saint-Louis / Atelier Canopé - Chapelle des Augustins / Eglise Notre-Dame-la-Grande / Halles du Marché Notre-Dame / Rue de la Cathédrale / Place de la Cathédrale / Baptistère Saint-Jean / Musée Sainte-Croix / Eglise Sainte-Radegonde / Confort Moderne
Kimsooja - Geometry of Breath, Kewenig Gallery
Kimsooja - Geometry of Breath
April 28 - June 30, 2017
Kewenig Gallery, Berlin
Brüderstraße 10, 10178 Berlin,
Germany
Kewenig is pleased to open the
exhibition "Geometry of Breath" by
Kimsooja on the occasion of the
Gallery Weekend. The exhibition was
planned by Michael O. Kewenig
together with Kimsooja. Due to his
recent passing away Kimsooja
dedicates her exhibition at the
Kewenig Gallery Berlin in
commemoration of the gallerist.
The conceptual artist Kimsooja (born
in 1957 in Daegu, South Korea) lives
in New York, Seoul and recently in
Berlin. For more than thirty years,
she has dedicated her oeuvre to the
themes of migration, the human
condition, and issues of the
displaced self. In site-specific
installations, performances,
sculptures, videos and photographic
works, she responds to the human
condition with investigations into
current cultural and political
phenomena such as migration,
cosmopolitanism and transculturalism
in an increasingly globalized yet
destructive world.
The exhibition "Geometry of Breath"
contextualizes Kimsooja's last 10
years of work that focus on the
corporeal aspect of her practice.
The exhibit begins with the
installation "To Breathe: Mandala"
(2010), a readymade American
jukebox, which amplifies the
artist's breathing sound
performance, "The Weaving Factory"
(2004). The jukebox is presented on
a painted wall, together with the
breathing and humming sound, the
speaker symbolizes and becomes the
artist's body, mandala. Kimsooja
leads us to a hypnotic and
meditative outer space and
timelessness.
The black "Bottari" (2017) line the
historical stairway leading to the
upper level of the exhibition.
Kimsooja first tied together Bottari
(Korean for "bundles") in 1992
during her time as artist-
in-residence at MoMA PS1; since
then, she has repeatedly taken them
up anew as an artistic evolution and
as a signature, each time in a
site-specific manner in response to
the personal and social condition
around her. Traditionally in Korea,
until well into the twentieth
century, Bottaris were constructed
by gathering a person's most
important possessions into a
wrapping cloth (in Kimsooja's work,
used bedcovers) often when a native
place had to be left behind.
According to Kimsooja, "Homeland is
not a topographically definable
place but a state of consciousness
and belonging." Wherever Kimsooja
finds herself to be, her body is
simultaneously her studio and her
home. In these new body of works,
the borders between her body – as
the space where new ideas arise –
and the works themselves become
increasingly blurred.
In the vestibule of the upper floor
of the exhibition Kimsooja exhibits
a selection of her recent print
series "Topology of Time" (2016),
which are produced from a collection
of the artist's hair since the early
90s. The hair functions in the
pictorial space simultaneously as a
drawing and an instrument for
measuring time. "Geometry of Body"
(2013-2016) are abstracted from
fingerprints taken for security
clearance at the American-Mexican
border crossing Mariposa Land Port
of Entry. In the framework of the
U.S. GSA Art in Architecture Program
in 2013, Kimsooja installed
large-format outdoor LED screen
video portraits of border residents
of Mexican descent living in the US
– directly above the high-security
zone of the controversial borderline
– to offer a gesture of greeting to
migrants who passed through the
border daily. The abstracted
fingerprints, once symbols of
identity, now reference the lines of
a topographic map.
The adjacent room contains "A
Laundry Woman," (2017) where the
artist's clothing, which after many
years of wear show traces of her
body, are installed on a
clothesline. Next, a visitor reaches
the print and video work "An Album:
Havana" (2007), a panning shot in
which bodies of anonymous passersby
are blurred and disappear into the
wind as the focus softens.
In the third room on the upper
floor, one encounters the sculpture
"Deductive Object" (2016),
Kimsooja's first plaster-cast of the
artist's arms and hands exhibited on
an antique wooden table. The casting
captures the artist's hands as her
index fingers meet her thumb
constructing a void within the hand.
This work is installed alongside
"One Breath" (2006 / 2016), a
digital embroidery of the sound
waves of a single breath from the
artist's "The Weaving Factory"
(2006) sound performance, as well as
"Geometry of Body" (2006 – 2015), a
yoga mat that the artist had used
for nine years until it held the
impression of her body as a
painting. The three works correspond
to the clay spheres – relics,
"Deductive Object" (2016), which
reference the major work "Archive of
Mind" (2016) at Kimsooja's solo
exhibition at the MMCA Hyundai Motor
Series 2016. In what is the artist's
first interactive installation, over
the course of the exhibition
visitors are invited to sit around a
19-meter-long elliptical table and
shape balls of fresh clay between
the palms of their hands,
accompanied by a sound performance
"Unfolding Sphere" of rolling clay
spheres and gurgling sounds by the
artist.
In the final room of the exhibition,
the video work "An Album: Hudson
Guild" (2009), inquires into the
changes and subjective conditions of
spatial and temporal perception in
old age. In the video recordings of
the senior citizens from the Hudson
Guild center in the Chelsea district
of New York, the artist focuses on
the phenomena of memory loss and
detachment from reality, while
remembering her deceased father, who
suffered a stroke. The portrayed
individuals are immigrants from
Latin America, Europe and Asia, who
are increasingly being forced out of
Chelsea due to rising rents. In the
photograph produced on the occasion
of the exhibition and titled "An
Album: Hudson Guild" (2009/2017),
they gather into a group portrait of
America – as a country of
immigrants.
In the warehouse of the gallery in
the district of Moabit, Kewenig is
installing Kimsooja's
video-performance "Bottari Truck –
Migrateurs" (2007), in which the
artist was conveyed through the
streets of Paris as a journey which
commemorated the 'Sans Papier'
Movement at Eglise Saint Bernard
where immigrants without papers
protected themselves in the early
90s. Upon the loading area of the
warehouse, the pick-up truck
complete with her paradigmatic
Bottaris is installed. The work was
conceived at the Artist-in-
Residence Program at the MAC/VAL
(Musée d'art contemporain du
Val-de-Marne) in an outlying
district of Paris, where immigrants
from Asia, North Africa and Southern
Europe live.
Kimsooja's works have been displayed
in numerous solo exhibitions at
international museums including MoMA
PS1, New York (2001); Crystal
Palace, Museo Nacional Centro de
Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2006);
Musée d'Art moderne et contemporain
St. Étienne (2012); Pérez Art Museum
Miami (2012); Vancouver Art Gallery
(2013); Guggenheim Bilbao (2015);
Centre Pompidou-Metz (2015);
National Museum of Modern and
Contemporary Art, Seoul (2010,
2016/17) and CAC Málaga (2016). In
2013, Kimsooja represented the
Korean Pavilion at the 55th Venice
Biennial. Furthermore, her works
have been exhibited at the 5th
Istanbul Biennale (1997), São Paulo
(1998) and Venice (1999, 2001, 2005,
2007). She was recently honored with
the Ho-Am Prize (2015) and the Asia
Society Arts Award in Hong Kong
(2017).
Upcoming: Intuition, Palazzo Fortuny, Venice
Intuition
May 13 - November 26, 2017
Palazzo Fortuny
Palazzoa Fortuny, San Marco 3958-San
Beneto, Venice, Italy
To coincide with the 2017 Venice
Art Biennale, the Axel & May
Vervoordt Foundation and the
Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia
will present their sixth, and
final, exhibition: Intuition. Curated
by Axel Vervoordt and Daniela
Ferretti, Director of the Palazzo
Fortuny, and co-curated by Dario
Dalla Lana, Davide Daninos and
Anne-Sophie Dusselier, the
exhibition will explore how
intuition has, in some form,
shaped art across geographies,
cultures and generations. It will
bring together historic, modern
and contemporary works related to
the concept of intuition, dreams,
telepathy, paranormal fantasy,
meditation, creative power,
hypnosis and inspiration.
Intuition will be the
last in a highly acclaimed series
at the Palazzo Fortuny co-curated
by Axel Vervoordt and Daniela
Ferretti, which include Artempo
(2007), In-finitum (2009), TRA
(2011), Tàpies. Lo Sguardo
dell’artista (2013) and most
recently, Proportio (2015).
Intuition is the ability to
acquire knowledge without proof,
evidence, or conscious reasoning:
a feeling that guides a person to
act in a certain way without fully
understanding why.
Some of the earliest works on
display in the exhibition will
reveal the role of intuition in
encouraging artists to connect the
two worlds, first attempts
by man to create an immediate link
between the sky and the earth:
from the erection of totems to
shamanism and mystical ecstasy;
and from religious iconography
describing illuminations
(Annunciation, Visitation,
Pentecost…), to classical works
capturing the divine revelation of
dreams.
Modern works by Vassily
Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Hilma af
Klint and more will highlight the
intuitive experience and feeling
that drives the creative process,
and led to the rise of abstract
art. The importance of the spatial
and temporal research undertaken
by the Gutai, Cobra, Zero,
Spazialismo and Fluxus groups will
be illustrated with works by Kazuo
Shiraga, Pierre Alechinsky,
Günther Uecker, Lucio Fontana,
Mario Deluigi and Joseph Beuys.
The Surrealists interest in the
unconscious will also be an
important focus of the exhibition.
Their fascination with dreams,
automatic writing and drawing,
collective creations and the state
of alteration of the ego will be
represented with the ‘dessins
communiqués’ and ‘cadavres exquis’
of André Breton, André Masson,
Paul Eluard, Remedios Varo, Victor
Brauner amongst others, along with
the experiments of camera-less
photography of Raoul Ubac and Man
Ray, and the works on paper by
Henry Michaux, Oscar Dominguez and
Joan Miró.
This legacy will be reflected in
a number of works by contemporary
artists such as Robert Morris,
William Anastasi, Isa Genzken,
Renato Leotta and Susan Morris
who, since the 1960s, have
revived, developed and modernised
the Surrealists’ interest with
automatism, leading to new formal
and technical results. Other
contemporary works by artists
including Marina Abramović, Chung
Chang-Sup, Ann Veronica Janssens
and Anish Kapoor, are inspired by
striking subjective experiences or
states of mind, and the artists’
concern and preoccupation with the
viewer.
During the opening days visitors
will be invited to explore and
experience the paranormal fantasy
of artists through four
performances related to dreams,
telepathy, and hypnosis – of the
mind and body –by young artists
Marcos Lutyens, Yasmine Hugonnet,
Angel Vergara and Matteo Nasini.
Intuition aims to
provoke questions about the
origins of creation, and is
intended to be viewed as a ‘work
in progress’, with leading
contemporary artists creating a
dialogue with the historic works
and with the unique character of
Mariano and Henriette Fortuny’s
former home. Kimsooja, Alberto
Garutti, Kurt Ralske, Bruna
Esposito and Nicola Martini will
all create site-specific
installations as part of the
exhibition – a direct, and
intuitive, response to the spaces
of Palazzo Fortuny.
Socle Du Monde
Biennale 2017
HEART - Herning Museum of Contemporary Art,
Herning
Socle Du Monde Biennale 2017
April 21 - August 27, 2017
HEART - Herning Museum of
Contemporary Art
Birk Centerpark 8, 7400 Herning,
Denmark
The Socle du Monde Biennale was
founded in 2002, making it the
oldest Danish biennale focusing on
contemporary art. It is named
after Piero Manzoni’s
groundbreaking sculpture Socle
du Monde, one of the main
masterpieces in the HEART
collection.
Socle du Monde 2017 presents a
wide range of works. Paintings,
installation art, sculptures and
performances – from colourless
paintings, shit in a can and live
chickens to art exchanges and a
dancing light robot.
The biennale celebrates Piero
Manzoni by turning its gaze partly
towards the past, partly to the
future as it presents a carefully
chosen selection of exciting
artists. It also presents a wide
range of works that have never
before been shown in Scandinavia.
The 2017 Socle du Monde
Biennale – to challenge the
Earth, the Moon, the Sun &
the Stars is the
7th instalment of the biennale.
The 2017 Socle Du Monde Biennale
takes place at HEART – Herning
Museum of Contemporary Art,
Herning Højskole, Carl-Henning
Pedersen & Else Alfelt’s
Museum, The Geometric Gardens and
HEART’s Sculpture Park.
The Socle du Monde Biennale will
be presenting a number of
internationally renowned curators
headed by Mattijs Visser, founding
director ZERO foundation, with
curators Olivier Varenne,
Jean-Hubert Martin, Daniel
Birnbaum and Maria Finders .
Assisting the team are Holger
Reenberg, director at HEART and
founding Director of The Socle du
Monde Biennale , the director at
Carl-Henning Pedersen & Else
Alfelts Museum, Lotte Korshøj and
Chief curator at HEART Michael
Bank Christoffersen. Each of the 5
curators will create their
individual chapter, based on a
work by Manzoni, while the
‘outdoor’ chapters with permanent
installations will be curated by
the complete team.
Socle
Du Monde Biennale
Person in the Crowd, Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia
Person in the Crowd: The
Contemporary Art of Flânerie
February 25 - May 22, 2017
The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia
2025 Benjamin Franklin Parkway,
Philadelphia, PA 19130, United
States
Person of the Crowd: The
Contemporary Art of Flânerie features
work by more than 50 international
artists who have taken to the
street to play detective, make
fantastic maps, scavenge and shop
for new materials, launch
guerrilla campaigns, and make
provocative spectacles of
themselves to speak to issues as
diverse as commodity fetishism,
gentrification, gender politics,
globalization, racism, and
homelessness. The exhibition is on
view February 25 through May 22,
2017, and features works, new
performances, and historical
pieces by Marina Abramović, Vito
Acconci, Eleanor Antin, Constant,
David Hammons, and Zhang Huan,
among many others.
While much of the exhibition will
be presented in the Barnes
Foundation's Roberts Gallery, Person
of the Crowd will also
reach into the city of
Philadelphia. A series of
performances—by artists including
Sanford Biggers, Tania Bruguera,
Ayana Evans, Zachary Fabri, and
Wilmer Wilson IV—will take place
on the streets of Philadelphia,
and billboard and street poster
projects will activate the city
throughout the exhibition run.
The Barnes has also commissioned
New York-based artist Man Bartlett
to create a project site and
digital artwork exploring themes
related to the exhibition and the
concept of "cyberflânerie."
Bartlett will act as a flâneur by
documenting the street
performances taking place
throughout the run of the
exhibition and inviting the
general public to step into the
position of the flâneur and share
their perceptions of everyday
urban life via social media using
the hashtag #personofthecrowd. He
will also work with teens in the
Philadelphia region to develop
videos documenting their own
experiences as flâneurs inspired
by their engagement in the public
spaces of the city.
Bartlett will weave together this
rich digital content—his
documentation of the performances,
the public's social media posts as
interpreted by a custom-built
machine learning application, and
Philadelphia students' videos—to
create the final piece which will
live on a project
site and will be projected
inside the Barnes Foundation's
Annenberg Court.
Artists: Marina Abramović, Vito Acconci, Franz Ackermann, Francis Alÿs, Eleanor Antin, Arman, Man Bartlett, Sanford Biggers, Slater Bradley, Stanley Brouwn, Tania Bruguera, Ingrid Calame, Sophie Calle, Papo Colo, Constant, Guy Debord, Allan Espiritu, Ayana Evans, Daphne Fitzpatrick, Zachary Fabri, Guerrilla Girls, Kendell Geers, Adler Guerrier, David Hammons, Keith Haring, Hi Red Center, Jenny Holzer, Tehching Hsieh, Zhang Huan, Allan Kaprow, Kimsooja, Moshekwa Langa, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Virgil Marti, Lee Mingwei, Annette Messager, Ivan Cardoso / Hélio Oiticica, Jefferson Pinder, Adrian Piper, William Pope.L, Robert Rauschenberg, Martha Rosler, Christy Rupp, Ed Ruscha, Carolee Schneemann, Dread Scott, Jean Shin, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Gillian Wearing, Wilmer Wilson IV, Brett Day Windham, David Wojnarowicz
Tous, des sang-mêlés, MAC/VAL Musée d'art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne
Tous, des sang-mêlés
April 22 - September 3, 2017
MAC/VAL Musée d'art Contemporain du
Val-de-Marne
Place de la Libération, 94400
Vitry-sur-Seine, France
The Val-de-Marne Contemporary Art
Museum is happy to present a group
show entitled “Tous, des
sang-mêlés” (“All, mixed-bloods”)
around the universal and burning
issue of cultural identity. This
original proposal echoes previous
curatorial projects conducted by
the MAC VAL over the last few
years.
In tune with the current world
affairs, this exhibition explores
the notion of cultural identity
through various artistic visions
and experiences: what is our
common denominator? How do we
build a shared culture in spite of
more and more diverse/opposite
origins? Those are some of the
current global issues. Under the
co-patronage of French historian
Lucien Febvre and his book We are
all mixed-bloods: a manual on the
history of the French civilization
(1950), and that of Stuart Hall,
founding father of Cultural
Studies, this exhibition
highlights the fictional dimension
of the concept of cultural
identity. Our curators have build
an exhibition around different
proposals that raise questions and
shed light on what relates and
sets us apart, on transfer of
knowledge and future, on power and
resistance, on individuals and
communities…
Through the voice of about sixty
international artists and around
one hundred artworks, the
exhibition investigates the topics
of cultural, national and sexual
identities. They all revolve
around the notion of being, yet
some are obvious, others bring up
–often passionate, always
political- debates, and others
call up memories of the past,
sensitivity, experiences, and
existence itself, from survival
instinct to the notion of living
together.
The works gathered in this
exhibition tackle these topics
from a real-life standpoint in a
spirit of exchange and dialogue.
If cultural identity is a fiction,
artists have different ways to
interpret, investigate and
question it…while taking distance
with the –all too reductive-
identity perspective.
How do we shape ourselves in
regard to our tongue, territory,
family, History, story, and
stereotypes?
The exhibition proposes several
elements to establish a common
ground on which alterities could
develop together and in regard to
one another.
Through the story, sensitivity,
words and commitment of artists
from all horizons, ages and
nationalities, each visitor can
grow his own understanding of the
notion of “Identity”. Set up in
the very heart of the exhibition,
“De quoi j’me mêle?” offers a
space of encounters, debates,
reading and relaxation all
throughout the duration of the
show. Its goal is to take time to
think together or individually
about the issues raised by the
exhibition and the reality of
today’s world. Singular voices
will speak up to share opinions as
well as personal and collective
experiences.
These encounters organized by
everyone who collaborated in the
organization of the event, are
free of charge and open to all
audience on Sunday, 30 April, 7
May, 14 May, 21 May, 28 May, 4
June, 11 June, 25 June, 9 July, 27
August and 3 September at 4pm.
Thread Lines, KMAC Museum, Kentucky
Thread Lines
April 29 - August 6, 2017
KMAC Museum, Kentucy
715 West Main Street, Louisville,
Kentucy 40202, United States
Curated by Joanna Kleinberg
Romanow
Organized by The Drawing Center,
New York
This group exhibition features
fifteen artists who engage in
sewing, knitting, and weaving to
create a wide-range of works that
activate the expressive and
conceptual potential of line and
illuminate affinities between the
mediums of textile and drawing.
Multi-generational in
scope, Thread Lines brings
together those pioneers
who—challenging entrenched
modernist hierarchies—first
unraveled the distinction between
textile and art with a new wave of
contemporary practitioners who
have inherited and expanded upon
their groundbreaking gestures.
The 2nd Changjiang
International Photography and Video Biennale
Changjiang Museum of Contemporary Art
The 2nd Changjiang International
Photography and Video Biennale
April 28 - July 28, 2017
Changjiang Museum of Contemporary
Art
Chongqing nanbing Yangtze River Art
Plaza, China
It has been 2 years since the
1st Session of Changjiang
International Photography
&Video Biennale achieved
success. And the 2nd Session is
coming now! This Biennale,
sponsored by Changjiang Museum
of Contemporary Art, will be
held in April 2017 for 3 months.
In the 2nd Session, we invite
Bisi Silva (Nigeria), Cui Cancan
and Wang Qingsong in China as
curators. These three curators,
with varied academic background,
from different countries and
regions, will bring us a great
exhibition. Bisi Silva is the
founder and art director of CCA
who has devoted to the study and
the plan of international
contemporary art and feminine
art. Moreover, she has been one
of the curators for many
significant Biennales. Cui
Cancan, Chinese independent
curator, is active in Chinese
contemporary art and the joint
area connected art and social
movement, who stands out and
gets much attention for planning
experimental exhibitions and
critical projects. Wang
Qingsong, the Chinese artist
that focus on the field of
contemporary photography, has
participated in many important
international Biennales and also
is the founder and
curator-in-chief of the 1st
Session of Changjiang
International Biennale of Video
Art and Photography. The 2ed
Session of Biennale will
continue to put the video art
and photography as the main
objective, which is just as the
1st session, and use space and
halls in a broader way to
explore a brand-new format for
showcase. All the space and
halls in Changjiang Museum of
Contemporary Art will get
artists, of different ages, from
varied region all over the world
together, whose works will form
new relationship for narration
and show the impact and value of
video art and photography on
every systems.
After a year’s discussion, the
objective of this Biennale has
settled as “Every Skyscraper is
Built from the Ground”, which
describes the process of art
development during the history
and emphasizes its base. The
objective also metaphorizes that
everything develops from
nothing, symbolizes that image
art are ubiquitous and
influenced all trades and
professions, and manifests the
Biennale‘s ambition to enter
into the public full-fledged.
This Biennale includes two
parts: one is Theme Exhibition,
the other is Special Project.
Five Units makes up the Theme
Exhibition, namely, “Video Art
and Film Art”, “Images and
Visual Communication”, “Images
and books, classic magazines,
network”, “Images and Local
time, Self-organization,
Experimental space”, “Images and
Contemporary Art”. These five
units focus on the wonderful
relationship between image art
and different systems. Image art
not only activates the
development and boundaries of
various social fields, but also
constantly changes itself in
this process, adding new
attributes. The units, the
literature and the works,
intertwining and complementing
each other, form rich and
complex cultural clues together.
This Biennale, just as the one
in last year, sets Video Art and
Photography Award and other
relative awards, judged by a
jury comprised 5 reviewers and
curators. During the 90 days,
roundtable meetings and
workshops will be held with
artists in multi-fields, through
cruising , broadcasting and
recreation, which emphasizes the
objective of “Every Skyscraper
is Built from the Ground” that
is to bring the exhibition,
transmission and application of
art to the social front, and
strengthen the relationship
between Biennale and different
regional art practices.
"Rip It Up” happens in west
China, which converged as a
flood of video art and
photography in the upper reaches
of the Yangtze River.
Upcoming: The Urge to Create Vision, Centrum Rzezby Polskiej, Oronsko, Poland
The Urge to Create Vision
May 27 - September 17, 2017
Centrum Rzezby Polskiej
Topolowa 1, 26-505 Oronsko, Poland
International Exhibition
carried out in cooperation with
the Foundation Signum includes
works by renowned artists of
historical avant-garde and
contemporary artists. In Orońsko
we see, among others, the work
of artists such as Laszlo
Moholy-Nagy, Jesus Rafael Soto,
Francisco and Stefan
Themersonowie Wojciech Fangor,
Kimsooja, Mikołaj Grospierre.
The exhibition will be the main
highlight of the summer season
2017
Curator: Grzegorz Musiał
Coordinator: Leszek Golec
Participants: Elias Crespin,
Carlos Cruz-Diez, Wojciech
Fangor, Paweł Grobelny, Mikołaj
Grospierre, Bethan Huws,
Kimsooja, Lin Yi, Michał
Martychowiec, Laszlo
Moholy-Nagy, Jesus Rafael Soto,
Francisco and Stefan Themerson
Ludwig Wilding, Chi Tsung Wu
Cetrum
Rzezby Polskiej, Oronsko,
Poland
KIMSOOJA
>>Geometry of Breath<<
April 28 - July 29, 2017
Opening April 28, 2017 6 to 9 p.m.
Special opening times at all
locations: April 28-30, 2017 11
a.m. to 7 p.m.
Further exhibtion venue during
Gallery Weekend Berlin
Kimsooja >>Bottari Truck -
Migrateurs<<
at Kewenig warehouse,
Wilhelmshavener Str. 7, 10551
Berlin-Moabit
Bottari Truck - Migrateurs, 2007
D-10178 Berlin Brüderstr. 10 t
+49.30.3988 038-0
gallery@kewenig.com
Kimsooja's feature on Bloomberg's Brilliant Ideas is now available online
Click
here to View the Video
Kimsooja Studio
Kimsooja will be featured on Bloomberg's Brilliant Ideas, which is scheduled to premiere on Friday January 13, 2017 in the U.S. at 9pm EST, in Europe at 7:30pm GMT, and in Asia at 6:00 pm UTC + 8
Current Exhibitions:
Kimsooja - Archive of Mind is on
view at MMCA, Seoul
July 27, 2016 - February 5, 2016
Dancing with Myself: Self-portrait
and Self-invention Wroks from the
Pinault Collection at Museum
Folkwang, Essen
October 7, 2016 - January 15, 2017
Uncertain States - Artistic
Strategies in States of Emergency,
Akademie der Künste, Berlin
October 15, 2016 - January 15,
2017
Urgent Conversations:
Athens-Antwerp, National Museum of
Contemporary Art - EMST, Athens
October 31 - 2016 - January 29,
2017
Kimsooja Studio
Peace
& Love to the World
Kimsooja will be featured on Bloomberg's Brilliant Ideas, which is scheduled to premiere on Friday January 13, 2017 in the U.S. at 9pm EST, in Europe at 7:30pm UTC, and in Asia at 6:00 pm UTC + 8
Current Exhibitions:
Kimsooja - Archive of Mind is on
view at MMCA, Seoul
July 27, 2016 - February 5, 2016
Kimsooja, To Breathe - Zone of
Zero at CAC Magala
October 7, 2016 - January 8, 2017
Enacting Stillness at The 8th
Floor Gallery, New York
September 21, 2016 - January 13,
2017
Dancing with Myself: Self-portrait
and Self-invention Wroks from the
Pinault Collection at Museum
Folkwang, Essen
October 7, 2016 - January 15, 2017
Uncertain States - Artistic
Strategies in States of Emergency,
Akademie der Künste, Berlin
October 15, 2016 - January 15,
2017
Urgent Conversations:
Athens-Antwerp, National Museum of
Contemporary Art - EMST, Athens
October 31 - 2016 - January 29,
2017
Archive of Mind, 2016, participatory site specific installation consisting of clay balls, 19 m elliptical wooden table, and sound performance Unfolding Sphere, 2016, Installation at Kimsooja – Archive of Mind at MMCA, Seoul, Courtesy of MMCA and Hyundai Motor Co. and Kimsooja Studio
Kimsooja - Archive of Mind at MMCA, Seoul
MMCA Hyundai Motor Series 2016:
Kimsooja
Archive of Mind
July 27, 2016 - February 5, 2017
National Museum of Modern and
Contemporary Art, Korea
30 Samcheong-ro, Jongno-gu,
Sogyeok-dong, Seoul 03062, Korea
MMCA Hyundai Motor Series 2016:
Kimsooja - Archive of Mind is
being held at the National Museum of
Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea
(Seoul). Selected by MMCA to be
featured as the third artist for
MMCA Hyundai Motor Series, Kimsooja
brings together a conceptual,
existential, aesthetic, and
structural investigation of
performance through immobility that
inverts the notion of the artist as
the predominant actor.
MMCA Hyundai Motor Series is long-term annual project inaugurated in 2014, sponsored by Hyundai Motors Company to support solo exhibitions of distinguished Korean artists. By providing a pivotal opportunity of commissioning new large-scale works to the artists with distinctive practices, the series instills fresh invigorating possibilities into the field of Korean contemporary art.
Kimsooja’s work deals with universal issues of restoration and regeneration, transcending beyond the regional boundaries to embracing the contemporary age through relationships between self and others. Kimsooja is praised for her steady practice which encompasses elements of Korean tradition and modernity, and particularity and universality.
This exhibition presents for the
first time to the public a major
performative installation Archive
of Mind, a new
sculpture installation Deductive
Object, the new
and fifth chapter of Kimsooja’s
ongoing film series "Thread Routes,"
and a series of recent works that
mark an evolution in the artist’s
practice. MMCA Hyundai Motor Series
2016: Kimsooja - Archive of Mind presents
works which have never been shown
before, including her large-scale
installation work constructed
on-site, which transforms with the
audience participation throughout
the exhibition period, and an
outdoor installation work in the
courtyard. We hope this exhibition
offers the audience the opportunity
to delve into the ideas of duality
and balance which have fascinated
the artist since her early works
until today.
National
Museum of Contemporary Art Korea
Kimsooja, To Breathe - Zone of Zero at CAC Málaga
Kimsooja, To Breathe - Zone of Zero
October 7, 2016 - January 8, 2017
CAC Malaga
Calle Alemania, S/N, 29001 Málaga,
Spain
The title of the exhibition To
Breathe – Zone of Zero is
an amalgam of the two works that
comprise it. The installation Lotus:
Zone of Zero (2016)
has turned the exhibition space
at the CAC Málaga into a place
of contemplation and meditation.
A total of 708 lotus lanterns
cover the ceiling of the room,
but instead of the circular
mandala design used in previous
presentations of this work, here
they are arranged in a
rectangular pattern as a
minimalist tableau. Gregorian,
Islamic and Tibetan chants flood
the hall and wash over
spectators, inviting them to
turn their thoughts inwards.
Although this project was
conceived in 2003 in response to
the Iraq War, today it is still
a relevant proposal, providing a
safe haven where people of
different cultures and religions
can come together. That zone is
a place of respect, reflection,
dialogue and harmony—a place of
concord. This installation
explores the notion of unity and
totality, according to which
mind and body are spiritually
joined.
The artist uses the exhibition
space of the CAC Málaga as a
sanctuary, an isolated refuge in
which to meditate or dream. She
makes the building’s
architectural structure one with
her work. The artist invites us
to experiment with our minds and
activate our senses, imagination
and sensory perceptions; her
work appeals to body and mind in
equal measure, composing a
visual poem. Kimsooja achieves
the maximum effect with a
minimum of elements.
This is apparent in her video To
Breathe – The Flags (2012),
in which 246 national flags are
slowly superimposed, one by one,
in alphabetical order, without
hierarchy or political bias,
putting all nations on the same
level: a visual experience in
which differences and conflicts
between nations can fuse and
blend together as one. The piece
was originally created for the
2012 London Olympics to reflect
the unifying spirit of the
games, although that first
version only included the flags
of participating countries. The
flags added later represent
nations which are not accepted
or officially recognised by the
authorities. Overlapping the
flags is a gesture of
understanding, of fraternity
among equals, of respect for
differences.
The works of Kimsooja, the most
influential Korean conceptual
artist active today, show a
commitment to engage with the
audience and inspire solidarity
and respect for others by
appealing to the sense of
humanity we all possess.
Kimsooja was born in Daegu, the
third largest city in Korea,
famous for its textile industry.
As the daughter of an army
officer, she lived in the
demilitarised zone in South
Korea, and her childhood was
spent constantly moving with her
family from city to city. The
artist is keenly aware of the
problematic issues of borders,
otherness (the relationship
between self and the other),
gender inequality and nomadism.
Today Kimsooja is still a nomad,
constantly travelling to share
her vision of the world.
During the exhibition, visitors
will also be able to admire two bottaris from
the collection of Carmen Riera
in the show Passion II (Kimsooja, Installation
of 2 Bottaris, 2005), now
on display at the CAC Málaga.
These bottaris are made
of used fabrics, and for
Kimsooja they contain the
memories, desires, experiences
and spirits of their former
owners.
CAC
Malaga
Kimsooja, Weaving the World at CC Strombeek
Kimsooja, Weaving the World
November 18, 2016 - December 18,
2016
CC Strombeek
Gemeenteplein, 1853, Belgium
From November 18 to December 18,
2016, Museum Culture Strombeek /
Ghent Kimsooja, Weaving the
World , a solo
exhibition of the Korean artist
Kimsooja. This artist living in
New York is considered as one of
the leading Korean artists of her
generation.
Her concept for CC Strombeek,
conceived as an extension of the
presentation and between 2010 and
2016 came about film series Thread
Routes , is extremely
fragile and feminine, and appeals
to a mix of (handmade) textiles,
architecture and elusive cosmos.
The exhibition Kimsooja,
Weaving the World is an
'experience' in which textile is
the reason for a human
philosophical and colorful outlook
on life.
In addition to the presentation in CC Strombeek shows Kimsooja at the Korean Cultural Center 's recent work Bottari - to the victims of violence Brussels . It is a variant of the brightly colored and richly decorated clothes bundles that she presented under that name in different contexts and constellations since 1992. Kimsooja made this 'monument' in memory of the victims of the attacks in Brussels on March 22 2016, using clothes from anonymous people in Brussels as well as the artist's bedsheet.
Kimsooja at Enacting Stillness, The 8th Floor Gallery
Enacting Stillness
September 21, 2016 - January 13,
2017
The 8th Floor
17 West 17th Street, New York, NY,
United States
Enacting Stillness is
an exhibition that considers the
political potential of slowing down
and stopping as forms of resistance,
protest, and refusal. An
international group of artists in
the exhibition engage in practices
that challenge and upend our
expectations for the continuity of
performative compositions, lines of
movement, and thought. Working with
the disciplines of choreography,
theater, moving image, sculpture and
performance, the exhibition presents
a multivalent reflection on
political histories from the
Americas to Europe and Asia, with
projects that employ a range of
gestures and time-based practices to
question what unexpected ruptures
like meditation, contemplation,
rest, and the reversing of movement
and time might mean to both the
artist and the viewer. The
exhibition will be on view September
21, 2016 to January 13, 2017 at
The 8th Floor, the exhibition and
programming space for The Shelley
& Donald Rubin Foundation,
located at 17 West 17th Street, New
York City.
Enacting Stillness features
artists John Ahearn, Rehan
Ansari, Nicolás
Dumit Estévez, Brendan
Fernandes, Alicia
Grullón, Yoko
Inoue, Joan Jonas, Claudia
Joskowicz, Kirsten
Justesen, Kimsooja, Carlos
Martiel, Bruce
Nauman, Clifford
Owens, Kameelah
Janan Rasheed, Emily
Roysdon, and Roman
Štětina. Together, the
artists in this exhibition reveal
the parallel connections between art
and political engagement, between
stillness and activation. Each of
the artists works with an economy of
means to test the limits of
performance – for the performer, the
viewer, and the participant –
provoking us to question how our own
positions, whether still or in
motion, connect to larger social and
political concerns.
The
8th Floor
Kimsooja at Minus Ego, Renouncing - Disappearing - Sharing, Goethe Institute Barcelona
Minus Ego, Renouncing -
Disappearing - Sharing
October 7 - December 22, 2016
Goethe Institut Barcelona
Roger de Flor 224, Barcelona
In the era of the narcissist
selfie it is both urgent and
necessary to reflect on the nature
of Ego, on how it influences and
affects our existence. As stated
by Alejandro Jodorowski: “The ego
is a cage with no bird that
believes it’s a bird with no
cage”. Surface and appearance
become the system and rules that
drive our actions. Egotism
permeates political and social
life and egos grow as strong,
unsustainable and destructive
entities that benefit neither the
individual nor the collective.
Ideologies, propaganda, seductive corporate messages, hyper-productivity and the astute architecture of capitalism, compose the elements of that cage which oppresses the essence and enhances the ego.
Kaja Silverman, a psychoanalytic theorist who has studied the links between the ego, the gaze, the look and image, considers Lacan and Freud’s well-known perspective on the ego: “Lacan proposes that the ego comes into existence the moment when the infant subject first apprehends the image of its body within a reflective surface, and is itself a mental refraction of that image. Thus, the ego is the representation of a corporal representation”. She also underlines: “In The Ego and the Id, Freud maintains that the ego is ‘first and foremost, a bodily ego; it is not merely a surface entity, but is itself the projection of a surface’”.
How can we free ourselves from the ego’s cage? How can we move from optical consciousness, the threshold of the visible, the material surface towards the imperceptible self, the essence, mind consciousness? What’s behind our mirror-image?
Minus Ego is an exhibition
addressing universal and timeless
questions of “ego”, focusing on
the challenging aspects of its
reduction as well as on a search
for the contemplative essence.
What do we refer to when talking about “ego reduction”? Is it about renouncing? Is it about disappearing? Perhaps, sharing? Is it related to silence? Is it about creating different relationships with people, ideas and contexts?
The complexity and diversity of the ego is a central issue in the life of every human and has been analysed from the perspective of philosophy, psychology, ethics, mysticism, religion, politics and culture in different times and spaces. The exploration of ego goes hand in hand with the evolution of humankind and thinking: from the psychic apparatus [id, ego and superego] defined by Sigmund Freud; or the radical individual autonomy proclaimed by Max Stirner; to the multiple senses of annihilation, fading, fusion, dissolution or illusion that we could find in different spiritual beliefs, rituals and practices.
The transient passage of life, the concept of impermanence, the Buddhist Anicca, the Fanaa vision in Sufism, the Hindu concept of Samadhi, the Pali term Nekkhamma, the active nihilism of Nietzsche’s philosophy, Heidegger’s Mitsein or Vattimo’s ‘weak thought’, all deal – in one way or another – with the idea of renouncing and disappearing.
These main notions – renouncing, disappearing and sharing – compose the reflections on ‘Minus Ego’, dig into the idea of essence and raise different questions and thoughts concerning the structure, definition, position and composition of ego.
The ‘Minus Ego’ project explores both the convergences and divergences of ego, its dependency and independency, its eternity and impermanence. Reflecting on this from within artistic contexts — themselves often filled with egotism — will provide an opportunity to explore the spirit and nature of ‘I’, ‘Self’, ‘Ego’ from different perspectives and their relationships with the ‘We’, the ‘Other’ and different ‘systems and superstructures’.
The different works forming the
exhibition reveal the many
possible interpretations of the
‘Minus Ego’ concept. Envisioned as
a research and exhibition project,
‘Minus Ego’ will be developed
through several steps in different
places and times, changing and
transforming itself just as egos
and identities do.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Marko Schiefelbein (Berlin
preview), and in Barcelona: Thilo
Droste, Christoph Schwarz, Jordi
Tolosa, Toni Serra, Abu Ali,
Jakob & Manila
Bartnik, Kimsooja, Susanne
Bosch, Michael Wesely, and Antoni
Tàpies.
Curated by: Herman
Bashiron Mendolicchio
Herman Bashiron Mendolicchio holds
an International PhD in “Art
History, Theory and Criticism”
from the University of Barcelona.
He is a faculty member and core
advisor at Transart Institute
(NY-Berlin) and has worked as a
Postdoctoral Visiting Researcher
at United Nations University -
Institute on Globalization,
Culture and Mobility (UNU-GCM). He
is invited Professor of the
Cultural Management Programme of
the University of Barcelona.
His current lines of research involve the subjects of intercultural processes, globalization, participation and mobility in contemporary art and cultural policies; the concepts of utopia, journey, mysticism and nomadism; the interactions between artistic, educational, media and cultural practices in the Mediterranean and the cultural cooperation between Asia and Europe.
He has participated in several
international conferences and
developed projects and research
residencies in Europe, Asia, USA
and the Middle East. As an art
critic, editor and independent
curator he collaborates with
international organizations and
institutions and writes
extensively for several magazines
and journals. He is Editorial
contributor at Culture360 –
Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF),
Managing Editor at ELSE – Transart
Institute, and co-founder of the
Platform for Contemporary Art and
Thought, InterArtive.
Goethe
Institut Barcelona
Kimsooja at Dancing with Myself: Self-portrait and Self-invention Works from the Pinault Collection, Museum Folkwang
Dancing with Myself:
Self-portrait and Self-invention
Works from the Pinault
Collection
October 7, 2016 - January 15,
2017
Museum Folkwang
Museumsplatz 1, 45128 Essen,
Germany
From October 7, 2016, to January
15, 2017, the large exhibition
hall in the Museum Folkwang will
be given over to an artistic
examination of the self. The
thread that links the pieces
together is the multifaceted
presence of the artists in their
own work. It will be the first
time that such a substantial
number of the outstanding group
of works acquired by Francois
Pinault is to be put on display
in Germany. Dancing with
Myself is a playful,
poetic, poltical, and wild dance
through contemporary art moving
from the 1960s up to our own
time.
In Dancing with Myself the
artists themselves play a major
part in the show. They are both
actors and raw material in their
own work—their bodies, their
biographies, their social and
sexual identities, their humor,
their melancholia. Moving beyond
the classical self-portrait, the
exhibition plays on the themes
of artistic temperament and
attitude.
At the same time Dancing
with Myself is also a
vibrant media crossover.
Large-format paintings come face
to face with huge video
installations; bodies turned
into photographs encounter
sculptural fragments. The
artists have inscribed
themselves in diverse ways—in
the photographic apparatus, the
video or film camera, the
screen, the space, the
conceptual gesture. The body
becomes a natural Dadaist tool
with childlike qualities; the
performative is made into the
primary form of representation.
In the late twentieth and early
twenty-first centuries, images
turn into productive
(distorting) mirrors for bodies
and identities.
Dancing with Myself is also a wild ride through the art history of the last fifty years. What still had truth and validity in the 1970s other than the experience of one’s own body? The postmodern irony and challenge of self-images and stereotypes of the time now come into contact with the attitudes of young artists who once again have a fixed social and political position, and use their own biographies and bodies to take a stand among the fault lines of a globalized and unequal world.
Dancing with Myself is
a collaboration between the
Museum Folkwang and the Pinault
Collection, supported by the
program Jeunes Commissaires of
the Bureau des arts plastiques
et de l’architecture of
the Institut français.
Artists:
Adel Abdessemed, Alighiero
Boetti, Claude Cahun, Maurizio
Cattelan, John Coplans, Urs
Fischer, LaToya Ruby Frazier,
Lee Friedlander, Gilbert &
George, Robert Gober, Nan
Goldin, Félix González-Torres,
Rodney Graham, David Hammons,
Roni Horn, Kimsooja, Martin
Kippenberger, Kurt Kranz, Urs
Lüthi, Steve McQueen, Boris
Mikhaïlov, Bruce Nauman, Paulo
Nazareth, Helmut Newton, Roman
Opalka, William Pope.L, Arnulf
Rainer, Charles Ray, Lili
Reynaud-Dewar, Ulrike Rosenbach,
Allan Sekula, Cindy Sherman, Jo
Spence, Hito Steyerl, Rudolf
Stingel, Alina Szapocznikow
Museum
Folkwang
Kimsooja at Uncertain States - Artistic Strategies in States of Emergency, Akademie der Künste
Uncertain States - Artistic
Strategies in States of
Emergency
October 15, 2016 - January 15,
2017
Akademie der Künste
Hanseatenweg 10, 10557 Berlin,
Germany
UNCERTAIN STATES is an
exhibition which investigates
the significance of memory and
narrative within processes of
social and cultural
transformation. In an era of
grave uncertainty fueled by the
destabilizing state and social
order in the eastern
Mediterranean region as well as
terrorism and new forms of
nationalism and racism in
Europe, artists take up the
responsibility for the “History
of the Other”, for communicating
in an open and differentiated
way where our own artistic
position is located in relation
to the other. This involves
dealing with such concerns as
collective traumatization, the
loss of identity, empathy and
the attempt to understand, and
the experience of profound
precariousness. Through their
works, visual artists offer a
platform not just for sharing
and exchange, but also with the
potential to transform
experience. For this reason, the
exhibition is structured around
two equally essential elements –
political, social and cultural
studies research and debates as
well as a series of remarkable
documents and objects from the
Akademie archives presenting
artists’ memories during
conditions of states of
emergency in Germany between
1933 and 1945. Together, in the
media of film, video,
photography, sculpture and
painting, these elements create
an interplay of discursive,
documentary and narrative
contributions.
Curators Contemporary Art: Anke
Hervol, Johannes Odenthal in
cooperation with Katerina
Gregos, Diana Wechsler; Archive:
Werner Heegewaldt, Anneka
Metzger
Akademie
der Künste
Kimsooja at Urgent Conversations: Anthens-Antwerp, National Museum of Contemporary Art - EMST, Athens
Urgent Conversations: Athens -
Antwerp
October 31, 2016 - January 29,
2017
National Museum of Contemporary
Art - EMST, Athens
Kallirrolis Avenue & Amvr.
Frantzi Str., Athens 11743,
Greece
Urgent Conversations: Athens
– Antwerp is the first
temporary exhibition in the long
overdue public unfolding of the
Greek National Museum of
Contemporary Art, Athens (EMST).
The project offers a reflective
dialogue between the collections
of EMST and M HKA, the Flemish
Contemporary Art Museum, based
in Antwerp. This exhibition
commences the program EMST
in the World.
The impulse of both Urgent
Conversations: Athens –
Antwerp and EMST in
the World is the
necessity of cultural dialogue
on a global scale, also within
multifaceted Europe. Societies
nowadays tend to polarize in 49
% versus 51 % camps,
negotiations start from
antagonistic positions as a
default position, introversion
and individualism became
entrenched states. There may be
loftier aspirations than the
capacity of conversation, but
its recent fragility often
reached critical levels and can
be described as an urgent
situation.
Urgent Conversations:
Athens – Antwerp has been
developed bottom up, each time
starting from work of a Greek
and a Belgian artist, that
resonate, searching a notion
that arises from this resonance,
then adding a third artist from
elsewhere in one of the two
collections. In this way the
exhibition was structured around
22 notions with each time work
of three artists in a dialogue
around it, the total consisting
of more than 70 works from 66
artists.
This exhibition enacts the
belief of both museums that
works of art may constantly
emanate new meanings, open
questions and initiate a much
desired dialogue, that basic
ground for human culture. This
project is therefore also a
counter-proposal to cultural and
curatorial sameness, opting
instead for a multitude of
convincing constellations of
subjects, impossible to exhaust,
leading up to discussions
concerning both individual and
collective realizations, and to
actions.
Athens and Antwerp seem to
represent two extremes of Europe
today, but at the same time
Greece and Flanders are both
regions of Europe that added
many crucial threads to its
cultural fabric. Institutions
like EMST and M HKA may further
cultivate that. EMST in the
World will develop in the
same vein further dialectical
relations between EMST and
institutions elsewhere with
corresponding aims and
practices, geared to the
research and curation of
contemporary art and other
contemporary cultural
manifestations.
National
Museum of Contemporary Art -
EMST, Athens
Kimsooja at Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany
Dancing with Myself: Self-portrait and
Self-invention Works from the Pinault
Collection
October 7, 2016 - January 15, 2017
Museum Folkwang
Museumsplatz 1, 45128 Essen, Germany
From October 7, 2016, to January 15,
2017, the large exhibition hall in the
Museum Folkwang will be given over to an
artistic examination of the self. The
thread that links the pieces together is
the multifaceted presence of the artists
in their own work. It will be the first
time that such a substantial number of
the outstanding group of works acquired
by Francois Pinault is to be put on
display in Germany. Dancing with
Myself is a playful, poetic,
poltical, and wild dance through
contemporary art moving from the 1960s
up to our own time.
In Dancing with Myself the
artists themselves play a major part in
the show. They are both actors and raw
material in their own work—their bodies,
their biographies, their social and
sexual identities, their humor, their
melancholia. Moving beyond the classical
self-portrait, the exhibition plays on
the themes of artistic temperament and
attitude.
At the same time Dancing with
Myself is also a vibrant media
crossover. Large-format paintings come
face to face with huge video
installations; bodies turned into
photographs encounter sculptural
fragments. The artists have inscribed
themselves in diverse ways—in the
photographic apparatus, the video or
film camera, the screen, the space, the
conceptual gesture. The body becomes a
natural Dadaist tool with childlike
qualities; the performative is made into
the primary form of representation. In
the late twentieth and early
twenty-first centuries, images turn into
productive (distorting) mirrors for
bodies and identities.
Dancing with Myself is also a
wild ride through the art history of the
last fifty years. What still had truth
and validity in the 1970s other than the
experience of one’s own body? The
postmodern irony and challenge of
self-images and stereotypes of the time
now come into contact with the attitudes
of young artists who once again have a
fixed social and political position, and
use their own biographies and bodies to
take a stand among the fault lines of a
globalized and unequal world.
Dancing with Myself is a
collaboration between the Museum
Folkwang and the Pinault Collection,
supported by the program Jeunes
Commissaires of the Bureau des arts
plastiques et de l’architecture of
the Institut français.
Artists:
Adel Abdessemed, Alighiero Boetti,
Claude Cahun, Maurizio Cattelan, John
Coplans, Urs Fischer, LaToya Ruby
Frazier, Lee Friedlander, Gilbert &
George, Robert Gober, Nan Goldin, Félix
González-Torres, Rodney Graham, David
Hammons, Roni Horn, Kimsooja, Martin
Kippenberger, Kurt Kranz, Urs Lüthi,
Steve McQueen, Boris Mikhaïlov, Bruce
Nauman, Paulo Nazareth, Helmut Newton,
Roman Opalka, William Pope.L, Arnulf
Rainer, Charles Ray, Lili Reynaud-Dewar,
Ulrike Rosenbach, Allan Sekula, Cindy
Sherman, Jo Spence, Hito Steyerl, Rudolf
Stingel, Alina Szapocznikow
Museum
Folkwang
CAC Málaga
Kimsooja, To Breathe - Zone of Zero
October 7, 2016 - January 8, 2017
Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga
(CAC Málaga)
C/ Alemania, s/n 29001 Malaga Spain
The CAC Málaga is pleased to present
the exhibition To Breathe - Zone
of Zero by Kimsooja, the most
influential conceptual Korean artist of
her generation. The title of the show is
an amalgam of the two works that
comprise it, a site-specific
intervention in the central space and a
video work in Espacio 5. Both works
invite us to reflect on profound aspects
of the human condition and alter our
perception of the world by embracing a
different cultural sensibility.
The visual language of Kimsooja (b.
Daegu, South Korea, 1957) is rooted in
Korean cultural traditions. She has
transformed and redefined the concept of
painting in the course of her career,
and her oeuvre ranges from
installations, photographs and
performances to videos and site-specific
interventions. Cloths, sequences of
light and sound, mirrors and the sound
of her own breathing are resources that
she uses and have become identifying
characteristics.
In the 1980s, she began her
multidisciplinary practice with
textiles, creating geometric patchwork
compositions by sewing scraps of used
cloth together. Kimsooja uses sewing as
a metaphor and as an activity in itself.
The bottari, bundles stuffed
with clothing and other personal
belongings – very common in Korean
culture and suggestive of mobility as
they are used to transport household
goods – are feature prominently in many
of her works and are presented in many
different ways. Brightly-coloured
traditional Korean bed covers are
another characteristic element. In the
1990s she started to document and record
her performances on video. The video
series A Needle Woman, begun in
1999, in which the artist filmed
herself, back to the camera, on the
crowded streets of some of the world's
most populous cities, brought her
international fame. In it Kimsooja
reverses the notion of the artist as the
main actor through non-action in order
to reveal a critical attitude, a mindset
linked to Zen Buddhism and eastern
philosophies.
Over time the artist has acquired a
universal, nomadic quality. Kimsooja's
art directly addresses profound
questions of human existence through
reflection and self-awareness. It
explores gender (women and the problems
they face in different places), identity
in the face of change and social flux,
time, memory and the human body's
relationship with the material world.
Concerned by experiences of cultural
dislocation in her native land, she also
reflects on socio-political issues we
face today, such as migration, exile and
violence, exposing art's complicated
connections to political life. The
themes she addresses transcend the local
context and are globally relevant.
Her works show a commitment to engage
with the audience and inspire solidarity
and respect for others by appealing to
the sense of humanity we all possess.
This is apparent in her video To
Breathe - The
Flags(2012), in which
246 national flags are slowly
superimposed, one by one, in
alphabetical order, without hierarchy or
political bias, all nations on the same
basic level; creating a visual
experience in which differences and
conflicts between nations can fuse and
blend together as one. The piece was
originally created for the 2012 London
Olympics to reflect the unifying spirit
of the games, although that first
version only included the flags of
participating countries. The flags added
later represent nations which are not
accepted or officially recognised by the
authorities. Overlapping the flags is a
gesture of understanding, of fraternity
among equals, of respect for
differences.
The installation Lotus: Zone of Zero (2016) has turned the exhibition space at the CAC Málaga into a place of contemplation and meditation. Some 700 lotus lanterns cover the ceiling of the room, but instead of the circular mandala design used in previous presentations of this work, here they are arranged in a rectangular pattern. Gregorian, Islamic and Tibetan chants flood the hall and wash over spectators, inviting them to turn their thoughts inwards. Although this project was conceived in 2003 in response to the Iraq War, today it is still a relevant proposal, providing a safe haven where people of different cultures and religions can meet. This zone is a place of respect, reflection, dialogue and harmony – a place of concord.
Please Join Us for the Opening of
Enacting Stillness
Wednesday, September 21
from 6 to 8pm
The 8th Floor
17 West 17th Street, 8th Floor
Enacting Stillness will be on view from Wednesday, September 21 to Friday, January 13, 2017. The exhibition considers the political potential of slowing down and stopping as forms of resistance, protest, and refusal. An international group of artists engage in practices that challenge and upend our expectations for the continuity of performative compositions, lines of movement, and modes of thought. Working with the disciplines of choreography, theater, moving image, sculpture and performance, Enacting Stillness presents a multivalent reflection on political histories from the Americas to Europe and Asia, with projects that employ a range of gestures and time-based practices to question what unexpected ruptures like meditation, contemplation, rest, and distortions of movement and time might mean to both the artist and the viewer.
Enacting Stillness features
artists John Ahearn, Rehan
Ansari, Nicolás Dumit
Estévez, Brendan Fernandes, Alicia
Grullon, Yoko Inoue, Joan
Jonas, Claudia
Joskowicz, Kirsten
Justesen, Kimsooja, Carlos
Martiel,
Bruce Nauman, Clifford
Owens, Kameelah Janan
Rasheed, Emily Roysdon,
and Roman Stětina.
Together, the artists in this exhibition
reveal the parallel connections between
art and political engagement, between
stillness and activation.
Please
find more details about the exhibition here.
For
further information, please contact:
William Furio
The 8th Floor
646.839.5903
wfurio@rubinfrost.com
Join the converstation with hastags
#The8thFloor, #RubinFoundation,
#EnactingStillness, and
#ArtandSocialJustice
The 8th Floor, 17 West 17th Street, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10011
Latest work by Kimsooja realized at Nara
2016.9.3(Sat) - 10.23(Sun)
Gangoji Temple
11 Chuincho, Nara
Nara Prefecture 630-8392
Japan
Nara city has launched "Culture City of East
Asia 2016" this April by having the ancient
ship made from the project by Cai Guo-Qiang.
For its core event period, all the art
installation will be open to public from 3rd
September. One of the installation site,
Gango-ji has been accompanied by the world
known Korean artist, Kimsooja.
On the occasion of Art Celebration in Nara, a Korean artist Kimsooja exhibits her work in this historical site. The artist has been on view in leading art scene such as Pompidou Metz or Guggenheim Bilbao with her solo show last year. She represented her cultural identity or roots through the installation and video using fabrics and other objects from daily life. Kimsooja at Nara for the first time tried to visualize the time which lasted in the specific site distinguishing what is visible now from what has vanished through the historical events. Her egg-like work made from black cast aluminum is reflected against the mirror on the pedestal Ishibutai, which induces the visitors’ introspection: the cyclic time, an Eastern concept, will be associated with the birth and rebirth of the lives.
Kimsooja exhibits another work using video in Shoushibo, inside the Gangoji temple. The stay or residency of the artist herself bring about something reminiscent of the ancient travelers between the city of Nara and of the foreign countries such as Korea and China, where many Buddhist monks or craftsman were traveling. Their experience searching for different culture seems to have prepared the base for the contemporary version of exchange. The event starts on September 3 through October 23 which should attract a broad audience.
Culture
City of East Asia 2016, Nara
MMCA HYUNDAI MOTOR SERIES 2016: KIMSOOJA –
마음의 기하학 / ARCHIVE OF MIND
July 27, 2016 – Feb 5, 2017
National Museum of Modern and Contemporary
Art
30 Samcheong-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul
03062, South Korea
Hours: Tue, Thu, Fri, Sun: 10am – 6pm
Wed, Sat: 10am – 9pm
T +82 2 3701 9500
www.mmca.go.kr
MMCA HYUNDAI MOTORS SERIES 2016: KIMSOOJA –
마음의 기하학 / ARCHIVE OF MIND is being held at
the National Museum of Modern and
Contemporary Art, Seoul. MMCA has selected
internationally-acclaimed artist Kimsooja
for the third year of MMCA HYUNDAI MOTOR
SERIES. An Exhibition shedding light on her
recent works will be on display from July
27th, 2016 through February 5th, 2017.
MMCA HYUNDAI MOTOR SERIES is a long-term
annual project inaugurated in 2014,
sponsored by Hyundai Motors Company to
support solo exhibitions of distinguished
Korean artists. By providing a pivotal
opportunity for new large-scale works to
artists with distinctive practice, the
series instills fresh invigorating
possibilities into the field of Korean
contemporary art.
The exhibition presents for the first time
to the public a large-scale performative
installation, 마음의기하학 /
Archive of Mind; a new sculpture
installation, Deductive Object; the
new and fifth chapter of her ongoing film
series, Thread Routes; and a series
of recent works that mark an evolution in
Kimsooja’s practice.
마음의기하학 / Archive of Mind offers
the artist's reflections on the canonical
problem of the act of making and will
transform with audience participation
throughout the exhibition period. Expanding
on the artist's concept of Bottari as
a method of wrapping, this participatory
workshop invites the audience to roll a lump
of clay into spherical forms on a
19-meter-long elliptical wooden table, which
doubles as a canvas. The cyclical act
introduces a polarity between symmetrical
forces of the participants' palms that
transpose their state of mind into matter
and matter into void. A new sound
performance piece titled Unfolding
Sphere presents an acoustic
counterpart to the rhythmic constellation of
the clay spheres.
Presented in the museum’s courtyard is Deductive
Object, a large-scale ovoid sculpture
suspended on a mirrored plinth. Light
diffracting films installed along the
courtyard window unfold sunlight into a
radiant color spectrum, while the
sculpture’s ‘obangsaek’ (Korean traditional
colors) surface enfolds the visible spectrum
back into a geometric definition. This work
is inspired by the Indian tradition of
brahmanda stones, also known as "cosmic
egg," signifying the birth of totality.
The artist also premieres the new chapter of
her ongoing film series, Thread Routes V.
Comprised of six chapters, Thread Routes juxtaposes
performative elements of textile culture
with parallel structures in nature,
architecture, agriculture, and gender
relationships. It is conceived as a
non-narrative visual poem and a visual
anthropology. The new chapter the fifth in
the series, takes place in the native
cultures of America’s Navajo and Hopi lands
against the backdrop of geological wonders,
such as Shiprock and Canyon de Chelly,
Arizona, and the architectural ruins of the
Chaco Culture in New Mexico. These bold
monumental forms contrast with primordial
acts of weaving and purified forms of Native
American crafts, marking the height of the
artist’s anthropological inquiry into the
birth of gestures that weave, wrap, and
unwrap the fabric of the world.
This exhibition also showcases a number of
works related to the concept of corporeal
geometry that Kimsooja has developed over
the span of her career.
For the last 30 years, Kimsooja has worked
on an ever-evolving tableau, a continuation
of the artist’s early work with painting and
re-contextualizing daily objects, actions,
as well as confronting urgent social issues
such as migration, exile, and violence. The
works presented at MMCA further her
commitment to creating an encounter with the
public and continue the artist’s early
meditation on non-doing and non-making as a
form of art practice. Kimsooja’s enduring
examination of dualism in life and art
transforms elements of performance into a
pursuit of totality.
Kimsooja (1957- ) was born in Daegu, South
Korea, and lives and works in New York,
Paris, and Seoul. She has had major solo
exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou, Metz
(2015); Guggenheim, Bilbao (2015); Vancouver
Art Gallery (2013); Korean Pavilion at the
Venice Biennale (2013); Perez Art Museum,
Miami (2012); Baltic Center, UK (2009);
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía,
Madrid (2006); Magasin 3, Stockholm (2006);
National Museum of Contemporary Art,
Athens(2005); MIT List Visual Arts Center,
Cambridge (2005); Museum Kunstpalast
(2004); Contemporary Art Museum, Lyon
(2003); PAC, Milan (2003); Kunsthalle
Bern(2002); P.S.1/MOMA (2001); ICC, Tokyo
(2001); Plateau, Samsung Museum of Art,
Seoul (2000), among other institutions.
Kimsooja has participated in international
group exhibitions, including the Venice
Biennale (1999, 2001, 2005, 2007, 2013);
Gwangju Biennale (2012, 2002,1995); Busan
Biennale (2014, 2002); Moscow Biennale
(2009); Whitney Biennial (2002); Lyon
Biennale (2000); Sao Paulo biennale
(1998); Istanbul Biennale (1997); Manifesta
1 (1995), among many others.
Jameco Exchange
No Longer Empty
89-62B 165th Street, Queens 11432
May 21 - July 17, 2016
Opening: Saturday, May
21, 12 - 6pm
No Longer Empty is pleased to present Jameco Exchange, a site-responsive exhibition and socially engaged education platform that revolves around the art of storytelling about a place: Jamaica, Queens. Located on 165th Street in the heart of downtown Jamaica–between the old trail and the former Beaver Pond–Jameco Exchange interweaves themes of commerce, movement, and travel, considering how both objects and stories create resonant forms of communication and exchange.
Jameco Exchange takes its name
from the etymology of “Jamaica”
(Queens)–a distortion of the name of the
Jameco Indians–and the first
settlers' purchase of Jamaica for two
guns, a coat, powder and lead. From its
origins as an ancient trade route to a
rural village, today's downtown Jamaica
is a vibrant commercial and intermodal
corridor. With a plush history of trade
and commerce, jazz and hip-hop;
Jamaica’s rich political heritage
includes the abolitionist spirit of
18th-century New York Senator Rufus
King; the activism of 19th-century
farmer, abolitionist and publisher
Wilson Rantus; and the political
activism of former Black Panther Assata
Shakur. “The Green,” an African-American
homestead from the 1800s that once ran
parallel to Jamaica Avenue is now
concealed by concrete, industrial
buildings and garages, weathering the
next crux of significant change.
Featuring site-responsive artworks
informed by Jamaica’s global urban
setting, Jameco Exchange is
inspired by the retail vernacular of the
two-story storefront and the cobblestone
pedestrian mall in which it is situated,
the social culture of Jamaica Avenue,
and the histories of Jamaica, Queens,
through the lens of collective
narrative.
Ordinary / Extraordinary: The Democratization of Art or the Will to Change Things
20 Bienal de Arte Paiz
Historic Center, Guatemala City
June 4 to July 3, 2016
The 20 Bienal de Arte Paiz, celebrates 40 years of supporting the Guatemalan visual arts by the Fundación Paiz for art and culture. The twentieth edition aspires to greater inclusiveness by bringing the public closer to contemporary art, through the promotion of a simple and direct dialogue as a first step for a better understanding of the art of our time. In the historic center of Guatemala City, the Bienal de Arte Paiz will endeavor to close the gap that exists between the public and the work of art through participatory works and other works inspired by the idea of art and life. The works, created by national and international artists, span from the sixties to the present. The 20 Bienal de Arte Paiz will also explore the notion of the everyday through various themes: Deconstructions, Obsessions, and the Exercise of Collecting Objects; Environments (Observation, Space and Place); Individual and Social Identity; Politics and Activism; and the Ordinary Unconscious.
20 Bienal de Arte Paiz
Public to Private: Photography in Korean art Since 1989
National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea
May 4 - July 24, 2016
This exhibition sheds light on how photography has been blazing its new path forward while interacting with a range of various other contemporary visual languages in the past three-decade history of contemporary Korean art.
1957 saw the first photography exhibition in Korea entitled The Family of Man, which was a traveling exhibition organized by MoMA, New York. Focusing on the nature and harmony of "Man" after World Wars I & II, it had a huge bearing on Korean photography. Since the exhibition, the Korean photography scene had been dominated by realism-based documentary and journalism photography. This exhibition directs attention to the development of the medium of photography in the history of Korean art: from realism-based public images in its beginning to the conceptual expression and aesthetic language of individual photographers in the second half of the 1980s and onward.
Especially, the year 1989 is of great importance with respect to globalization. Brought about by the Tiananmen Square protest in China (June), Perestroika in the Soviet Union (August), and the breakdown of the Berlin War in Germany (November), the end of the Cold War transformed the values of international society. Korean society contributed to the rapidity of globalization through the hosting of the 1988 Olympics and the 1989 liberalization of overseas travel, and the views and attitudes of photographers underwent a tremendous change.
In the international contemporary art scene the photographic works of Jeff Wall and the Dusseldorf school rose to prominence, and this change induced Korean photographers' and artists' contemporary participation in the formation of a new horizon of photography.
Public to Private reveals how those photographers and contemporary artists have appropriated, used, and reformatted into their own visual languages the medium of photography in the global art scene. At this point when the generation of digital revolution has witnessed changes for the past 30 years and is facing the new possibilities of photography, it commits itself to reading into the context in which a photographer is an artist.
The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art
La Terre, Le Feu, L'Esprit: Chefs-d'œuvre de la Céramique Coréenne
Grand Palais, Paris
April 27 - June 20, 2016
Kimsooja, Earth-Water-Fire-Air
The work of Kimsooja, Earth-Water-Fire-Air, which is based on the four elements of nature and their organic combination, seems to consist only of typical natural landscapes of a volcanic area, when seen in just a visual context. These landscapes capture the "natural phenomenon" itself, without any deliberate intervention, artificial transformation or staging on the artist's part. The artist silently brings the spectators in front of the nature.
It is a world of principles in nature, origins of matter, essence of human life, mutuality and coexistence of all such qualities. The four elements of nature – earth, water, fire and air – are the roots of western philosophy, but also related to the five elements of creation (earth, water, fire, wind and void) according to Buddhist philosophy. Such elements, which are the core of Eastern and Western thoughts, and the energy created by their mutual combination enable us to think about the recurrent structure of circulation known as the birth and dearth of all things, to realize the mysterious relationship between nature (matter) and humans, and to ponder on the life of humans.
The minimum intervention and minimum action in Kimsooja's work, her aesthetics of the least in her work process is a kind of meditation, "making nothing and being nothing." Making nothing but revealing something more powerful, visualizing perpetuity through extinction, and telling the most with the least – this is her work.
(from the essay by Sung Won Kim, "About nothingness: being nothing and making nothing," Earth, Water, Fire, Air" for the catalogue for the Atelier Hermes solo show in Seoul, 2009.)
Grand Palais
Architecture of Life
The UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), California
January 31 - May 29, 2016
Architecture of Life, the inaugural exhibition in BAMPFA's landmark new building, explores the ways that architecture—as concept, metaphor, and practice—illuminates various aspects of life experience: the nature of the self and psyche, the fundamental structures of reality, and the power of the imagination to reshape our world. Occupying every gallery in the new building, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the exhibition comprises over two hundred works of art in a wide range of media, as well as scientific illustrations and architectural drawings and models, made over the past two thousand years. Boundary-breaking, innovative, and radically interdisciplinary, the exhibition presents visually exquisite, rarely seen works in ways that suggest new connections and meanings.
The UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA)
Rever D'Un Autre Monde
Centre D'histoire de La Résistance et de la Déportation
Februrary 4 - May 29, 2016
The CHRD presents a group exhibition delivering different writings on the theme of travel and exile of non-European migrants, through a selection of artistic proposals.
The project is a continuation exhibitions commuters and Chechens Travel aboveground, which addressed the theme of departure, suffered or voluntary. Rely on art works, rather than photojournalism traditionally chosen by the museum to address contemporary themes, is to bet on the aesthetic experience as a means of access to knowledge of painful problems, which media coverage paradoxically intense just ignore.
A constant phenomenon in the history of mankind, migration is always linked to economic or geostrategic context. To address this, the CHRD is interested in representation that give contemporary artists and photographers. The fields they explore, they emphasize the courses deliver sensitive chronic, sometimes metaphorical, one of the major events of the last thirty years.
Centre D'histoire de La Résistance et de la Déportation
The Vertigo Effect
MAC/VAL Musée d'art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne
October 24, 2015 - October 24, 2016
This new hanging, titled "L'Effet Vertigo", is guided by the artists' individual relations to history in a double, reverse movement which implies a concomitant closing-in and distancing. This filmic process was invented by Alfred Hitchcock in Vertigo in 1958, in order to suggest the dizziness felt by Scottie (James Stewart) on the famous stairs of the tower. It is designed to dramatize the subject by keeping them in the frame, so they don't go out of view, by means of a simultaneous forward and backward oscillation.
This can be taken as a metaphor for reading history in the present and for the stratagems and various attitudes adopted in its regard, from the distancing vital to visual focus to the displacements and changes of scenery that are sometimes needed to get closer to the subject.
"I was and remain persuaded that the role assigned to creators is out of proportion compared to the one allowed to viewers. There is a whole history of art that needs to be rewritten here." François Morellet.
With his customary insolence, François Morellet illumines this new hanging of the collection by questioning the notion of artistic genius and asserting the creative role of the interpreter. For it is the interpreter who gives and creates meaning, based on the narrative of the works. It is the beholder who adds, valorises, questions, and turns into music the story, notes, words, objects and time itself. Today, the museum is inviting visitors to question what constitutes their relation to the artwork and to history, what feeds and orients their gaze, this dimension of creativity, this space of thought that belongs to each one of us.
To this end, the exhibition sequence is deployed like a narrative in which the works embody and explore the questions of the gaze, the model, interpretation, reinterpretation, and revisiting. The artists brought together here reread, remake, replay or reinterpret historical facts, the use of materials, themes and subjects; they thus bring them into the light of a present that metamorphoses (them), either through the filter of their personal experience, or by sampling parts of this real past — objects, archives and stories — and projecting them into a universe that is other, a different situation, and towards a new meaning.
The hanging sets up a dialogue between works that relate the history of recent conflicts and explorations, episodes from scientific history, from the history of colonialism and decolonisation of which these artists are the products, that tell of traditions and rites, the history of objects, part of our own cultural history.
MAC/VAL
Kimsooja at Grand Palais
Kimsooja, Earth-Water-Fire-Air The
work of Kimsooja,
Earth-Water-Fire-Air, which is based
on the four elements of nature and
their organic combination, seems to
consist only of typical natural
landscapes of a volcanic area, when
seen in just a visual context. These
landscapes capture the "natural
phenomenon" itself, without any
deliberate intervention, artificial
transformation or staging on the
artist's part. The artist silently
brings the spectators in front of
the nature.
It is a world of principles in
nature, origins of matter, essence
of human life, mutuality and
coexistence of all such qualities.
The four elements of nature – earth,
water, fire and air – are the roots
of western philosophy, but also
related to the five elements of
creation (earth, water, fire, wind
and void) according to Buddhist
philosophy. Such elements, which are
the core of Eastern and Western
thoughts, and the energy created by
their mutual combination enable us
to think about the recurrent
structure of circulation known as
the birth and dearth of all things,
to realize the mysterious
relationship between nature (matter)
and humans, and to ponder on the
life of humans.
The minimum intervention and minimum
action in Kimsooja's work, her
aesthetics of the least in her work
process is a kind of meditation,
"making nothing and being nothing."
Making nothing but revealing
something more powerful, visualizing
perpetuity through extinction, and
telling the most with the least –
this is her work.
(from the essay by Sung Won Kim,
"About nothingness: being nothing
and making nothing," Earth, Water,
Fire, Air" for the catalogue for the
Atelier Hermes solo show in Seoul,
2009.)
The Temple in Beijing
From May 16 onwards, Kimsooja's
video installation Aire de Tierra
/ Air of Earth (2009) will be
screened in the courtyard of The
Temple in Beijing. Aire de Tierra
/ Air of Earth is one chapter of
the artist's 8-channel video
installation Earth – Water – Fire
– Air. The title as well as the
main concept of this multi-channel
performance video are based on the
four fundamental elements
of nature. They constantly
interrelate to one another as they
continue to merge, transform and
extinct while organically
embracing and excluding one
another. Video footages taken in
Lanzarote Island and Guatemalan
volcanoes are featured as the
artist's visual manifestation of
nirvana in which all four
basic elements reincarnate;
burning lava flow became rocks and
dust that blew in the air.
According to eastern philosophy,
such as Zen Buddhism and Taoism,
each element's property is created
by the other, as is reflected in
each chapter's title (Fire of
Earth, Water of Earth, Earth of
Water, Air of Fire, Air of Earth,
Air of Water, Fire of Air and
Water of Air.
Kimsooja's outdoor projection will be on view every evening between 6:30 pm and 11:00 pm, until May 1. Located in Beijing, this venue is a forgotten Qing Dynasty temple that has been restored and transformed into a boutique hotel and art space. The antique structure—known to the faithful as Zhizhusi, the Temple of Wisdom—was one of three Tibetan Buddhist temples built in the mid-18th century near the Imperial Palace. Battered and charred by fire, the edifice was hardly promising for development. But years of restoration has transformed it into an art hotel with eight luxury rooms, a gallery, a restaurant, a sculpture courtyard. Stripped of its bleak Communist facade, the near-ruined temple today has a new life, subtly blending Eastern spirituality with contemporary Western style. Today, The Temple is known as the only venue in China that houses a skypace installation of James Turell, 'Gathered Sky'.
The Temple Hotel
23 Shatan Beijie
Dongcheng District
Beijing, China
www.thetemplehotel.com
templecollection@thetemplehotel.com
WeChat ID Temple东景缘
More information about The Temple
can be found here.
Architecture of Life
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive
January 31 – May 29, 2016
Curated by Lawrence Rinder
Architecture of Life, the inaugural exhibition in BAMPFA's landmark new building, explores the ways that architecture—as concept, metaphor, and practice—illuminates various aspects of life experience: the nature of the self and psyche, the fundamental structures of reality, and the power of the imagination to reshape our world. Occupying every gallery in the new building, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the exhibition comprises over two hundred works of art in a wide range of media, as well as scientific illustrations and architectural drawings and models, made over the past two thousand years.
Architecture of Life is the U.S. premere of Kimsooja's Thread Routes - Chapter II. Thread Routes is the first 16-mm film series produced by multi-disciplinary conceptual artist Kimsooja (b. 1957, Daegu, Korea). This ongoing project consists of six chapters, each shot in a different part of the world, and together they form a mosaic of common performative elements that unite different textile cultures.
These films uncover the structural continuity between textile, architecture, nature, agriculture, and gender relations through the framework of a non-narrative documentary, plunging the viewer into the realm of poetry and visual anthropology. The artist first conceived this series in 2002 after visiting Brugge and experiencing the process of lace making.
Kimsooja established her multidisciplinary practice in the beginning of 1980s. Taking yibulbo (Korean bedcover) as a tableau and as a frame of life, her work evolved through the use of textiles and performance. Bottari (traditional Korean cloth bundle), as an extension of this idea, has been an essential feature in many of her works. Thread Routes is directly related to her earlier sewn pieces, wrapped objects, and A Needle Woman performance videos, in which she placed herself in the middle of vibrant urban fabrics of metropolises around the world.
View a trailer of Thread Routes - Chapter II
BAMPFA
Where Do We Migrate To?
Värmlands Museum, Karlstad
September 19, 2015– February 22, 2016
Curated by Niels Van Tomme
Where Do We Migrate To? explores contemporary manifestations of required mobility as well as experiences of displacement and exile, and examines how intensified situations of transition inexorably undermine our cultural and personal notions of settlement and belonging. In establishing an imaginative framework that allows artworks to inspire new insights about such conditions, the exhibition also questions notions of inherence and destiny.
View a trailer of A Needle Woman
Värmlands Museum
Fear Nothing, She Says
Museo Nacional de Escultura,
Valladolid, Spain
November 17, 2015 – February 28,
2016
Curated by Rosa Martinez
Organised in connection with the
5th Centenary of the Birth of
Saint Teresa of Jesus, the aim of
this exhibition is to explore the
meaning of spiritual searches at
the onset of the third millennium,
establishing the need to find
their common anthropological
thread and endorsing their
connection with creative
languages.
The exhibition title Fear
Nothing, She Says. When Art
Reveals Mystic Truths revises
the verse by Teresa of Jesus,
transforming 'Let nothing perturb
you, nothing frighten you,' into
the simpler 'fear nothing', which
it relates to the novel Détruire,
dit-elle by Marguerite
Duras, another great authoress and
sufferer for love. The
afterthought 'she says' reaffirms
the fact that the invitation to
overcome obstacles and fears is
conveyed in the words of a woman,
and therefore opens up to the new
developments of global ethical and
aesthetic awareness that demands,
as Saint Teresa herself often did,
the inclusion of women as subjects
of knowledge and power.
The twenty-one contemporary
artists have been chosen for their
thematic, conceptual, existential
or political affinities with the
figure and the legacy of Teresa of
Avila: Marina Abramovic, Anila
Quayyum Agha, José Ramón Ais,
Pilar Albarracín, Francis Alÿs,
Miquel Barceló, Louise Bourgeois,
Dora García, Anish Kapoor, Waqas
Khan, Kimsooja, Cristina Lucas,
Bruce Nauman, Nikos Navridis,
Rivane Neuenschwander, Cai
Guo-Qiang, Eglė Rakauskaitė,
Soledad Sevilla, Josefa Tolrà,
Eulalia Valldosera and Bill
Viola. Works designed specifically
for the show complement others
that coexist with unique pieces
from the museum's historical
collections.
View a trailer of
A Needle Woman - Kitakyushu
Museo
Nacional De Escultura
Remember Lidice at Edition Block,
Berlin, Germany
September 12, 2015 – February 13,
2016
Curated by René Block
The year 2017 will mark the 75th
anniversary of the massacre of
Lidice that was committed by the
National Socialists. In
commemoration of this incident the
two previous Lidice exhibitions
»Hommage à Lidice« (1967) and »Pro
Lidice« (1997) will be continued
by a third project »Remember
Lidice« (2015). In response to an
appeal issued in 1967 by Sir
Barnett Stross, head of the
"Lidice-shall-live" committee,
René Block invited, both in 1967
and 1997, young artists that were
representative of the current
German art scene to donate a work
for a museum to be built in
Lidice. The resulting collection
distinguishes itself by high
artistic quality and a cross
section of the respective
contemporary art production. For
the project »Remember Lidice«
artists have been invited for the
third time to donate works for
Lidice. With this chapter, the
frame of reference will once more
be broadened: What started out as
a German-Czech issue with the
contributions of 21 West-German
artists in 1967 (»Hommage à
Lidice«), and continued in 1997 as
a project of a united Germany with
contributions from 31 artists
(»Pro Lidice«), will in 2015
become an international subject
matter, with the participation of
44 international artists. The wish
to expand the collection in
Lidice, which is currently
exhibited in the former community
centre now reconstructed as a
museum, by the newly donated works
is meant to be a renewed gesture
of solidarity. Beginning in
September, the works will
successively be collected in the
exhibition space of Edition Block
and can be seen there until
February 2016. The once completed
collection will also be shown at
the Kunsthalle Mannheim before it
will officially be handed over to
Lidice.
Edition
Block
30 Years Galerie Tschudi. Zuoz,
Switzerland
December 19, 2015 – March 19, 2016
In celebration of the gallery's 30
year anniversary Galerie Tschudi
will be exhibiting the work of
Ulrich Rückriem, Alan Charlton,
Richard Long, Mario Merz, Carl
Andre, Niele Toroni, Hamish Fulton,
Martina Klein, Melissa Kretschmar,
Dan Walsh, Balthasar Burkhard, Petra
Wunderlich, Callum Innes, Bethan
Huws, Not Vitals, Stanley Brouwn,
Kimsooja, Su-Mei Tse, and Julian
Charrière.
Journées internationales du film sur l'art
Louvre
a.p.r.e.s Gilles Coudert is invited
to the 9th International Days of
Films on Art, held in the Auditorium
of the Louvre Museum January 22 to
31, 2016.
A projection of his films is
scheduled Friday, January 29th at
14:30 and will be followed by a
discussion with John Paul Fargier,
director, producer and critic.
Screening of "Daniel Buren,
Monumenta 2012" (2013/52 min.),
"Tadashi Kawamata , Scheiterturm"
(2014/34 min.), and "Kimsooja , Le
Voyage immobile" (2012/26 min.)
Daniel Buren, Monumenta 2012 (2013
/ 50 min.) A film by Gilles Coudert
This documentary reflects the latest
edition of the Monumenta at
the Grand Palais in Paris in
2012 dedicated to Daniel
Buren. Interviews with
key stakeholders (Daniel
Buren, artist, Patrick
Bouchain, architect Marc
Sanchez, Commissioner; Alexandre
Meyer, musician Guy
Lelong, critic and
writer; etc.) intersect views on
this project and shed light on the
issues of this work. The film
attempts to show the dark side of
the exposure and the human dimension
of such an undertaking through the
portraits of people with investees
for installation but also its
practice by the public and finally
dialogue between the proposal of
Daniel Buren and various artistic
events scheduled throughout the
duration of the exhibition.
>
See an Extract...
Tadashi Kawamata
Scheiterturm (2014/34
min.) A film by Gilles CoudertTadashi
Kawamata responds to the
invitation of the Kunstmuseum
Thurgau in the heart of
the Charterhouse Ittingen in
Switzerland with students
by building a tower made up of
thousands of firewood logs from the
forest area. The people, students,
organizers and project stakeholders
share with us this adventure and
give us their impressions.
>
Available in book-DVD
>
See an Extract...
Kimsooja, Le Voyage Immobile (2012/26
min.) A film by Gilles Coudert Over
an interview conducted by Gilles
Coudert, Kimsooja discusses
her artistic journey through many
projects and film archives. Its
first facilities to its most recent
projects, it focuses its work over
his personal journey. It evokes its
traditional fabric -based works such
as bottaris video in the series of
her "Needle Woman" or more recent
projects like Mumbai and remarkable
installation in the Crystal Pavilion
of Reina Sofia.
>
Available in DVD Collection WORKS
& PROCESS
>
See an Extract...
Download full program here: http://mini-site.louvre.fr/trimestriel/2015/brochure_Jifa_2016/#1
Practical Information: http://www.louvre.fr/rencontre-avec-gilles-coudert?cycle=120178
Kimsooja Studio
Happy New Year!
Peace & Love
Kimsooja Studio
Kimsooja - To Breathe is on view at the Centre Pompidou Metz until January 4, 2016
To Breathe, 2015, site-specific
installation consisting of video
projection To Breathe: Invisible
Mirror, Invisible Needle, 2005,
mirror, diffraction grating film,
and sound performance The Weaving
Factory 2004, at Centre
Pompidou-Metz, photograph by Jaeho
Chong. Commissioned by Centre
Pompidou-Metz, Courtesy of
Institut français/Année France
Corée, Kukje Gallery, Seoul and
Kimsooja Studio
Art21
Kimsooja: Collaboration on Campus -
Nanotechnology & Contemporary Art
Kimsooja:Collaboration on Campus - Nanotechnology & Contemporary Art
In this ART21-produced special feature, artist Kimsooja collaborates with scientists and nanotechnologists to create an iridescent steel and polymer sculpture for the Cornell University campus in Ithaca, NY. Developed in collaboration with architect Jaeho Chong and Cornell nano material engineer Ulirich Wiesner, Ph. D., the 46-foot-tall needle-shaped structure A Needle Woman: Galaxy was a Memory,u Earth is a Sovenir (2014) is the result of the artist's first-ever collaboration with scientists. "This tradition of bringing art and science together precedes modernism," says Stephanie Owens, director of Cornell Council for the Arts. "So [Kimsooja] and [Wiesner] working at a similar interface related to light and objects was a definite continuation of this tradition.
The sculpture's plexi-glass panels are coated with an nano polymer film—molecularly engineered by Cornell materials scientists in Wiesner's lab—to produce experiences inspired by naturally-occurring light phenomenon. "We use iridescence as a principle in order to mimic the effect of the butterfly wing," says Wiesner.
A Needle Woman: Galaxy was a Memory, Earth is a Souvenir was created as part of the artist's residency for the Cornell Council for the Arts 2014 Biennial.
Art21
Centre Pompidou-Metz
Kimsooja - To Breathe
Centre Pompidou-Metz, France
October 26, 2015 – January 4, 2016
To mark France's Korean year, a site-specific installation by the multidisciplinary conceptual artist Kimsooja invites viewers to partake in a transformative performance of light, sound, and the architecture of Centre Pompidou-Metz.
For the past thirty years, Kimsooja has conceived a body of work often described as conceptual, humanist, and ethical. It transcends current issues of identity, migration, ideological and physical divide across people and borders, to find expression in a visual poetry and a life-performance resting beyond material conditions and the act of making.
To Breathe is an invitation to contemplate. Its unfolding and mirroring of light into a fully visible iridescent spectrum establish a tri-dimensional tableau, a revelation of one's body in space and time that defies horizontality and verticality. Kimsooja's enduring examination of dualism in life and art transforms elements of painting into a new language of light, sound, and reflections in pursuit of totality.
Centre Pompidou-Metz
Fear Nothing, She Says
Museo Nacional de Escultura,
Valladolid, Spain
November 17, 2015 – February
28, 2016
Organised in connection with
the 5th Centenary of the Birth
of Saint Teresa of Jesus, the
aim of this exhibition is to
explore the meaning of
spiritual searches at the
onset of the third millennium,
establishing the need to find
their common anthropological
thread and endorsing their
connection with creative
languages.
The exhibition title Fear
Nothing, She Says. When Art
Reveals Mystic Truths revises
the verse by Teresa of Jesus,
transforming 'Let nothing
perturb you, nothing frighten
you,' into the simpler 'fear
nothing', which it relates to
the novel Détruire,
dit-elle by Marguerite
Duras, another great authoress
and sufferer for love. The
afterthought 'she says'
reaffirms the fact that the
invitation to overcome
obstacles and fears is
conveyed in the words of a
woman, and therefore opens up
to the new developments of
global ethical and aesthetic
awareness that demands, as
Saint Teresa herself often
did, the inclusion of women as
subjects of knowledge and
power.
The twenty-one contemporary
artists have been chosen for
their thematic, conceptual,
existential or political
affinities with the figure and
the legacy of Teresa of
Avila: Marina Abramovic, Anila
Quayyum Agha, José Ramón Ais,
Pilar Albarracín, Francis
Alÿs, Miquel Barceló, Louise
Bourgeois, Dora García, Anish
Kapoor, Waqas Khan, Kimsooja,
Cristina Lucas, Bruce Nauman,
Nikos Navridis, Rivane
Neuenschwander, Cai Guo-Qiang,
Eglė Rakauskaitė, Soledad
Sevilla, Josefa Tolrà, Eulalia
Valldosera and Bill
Viola. Works designed
specifically for the show
complement others that coexist
with unique pieces from the
museum's historical
collections.
Museo
Nacional De Escultura
Exhibition from the Collection MAC/VAL, Paris
Exhibition from the
Collection, MAC/VAL, Paris
October 24, 2015– January 2016
Opening Reception: Friday
October 23, 2015
Kimsooja's video piece records
a performance in Paris in
which she evokes the constant
state of migration that
characterizes our global
society. The Bottari Truck
loaded local immigrants'
bedcovers and used clothing
donated from all over Paris on
top of an old Peugeot pick-up
truck. Kim started her
"migration" from Place de la
Liberation, where Musée
MAC/VAL, which commissioned
the piece, is located, and
which is also on the border of
the area of Paris where many
immigrants from China, the
Middle East, Africa and
Eastern Europe live. The truck
moved through the
neighborhoods of Paris, each
containing a different history
of immigrants to France: Ivry
(where there is a Chinese
community), Place d'Italy,
Bastille, Place de la
Republic, Canal Saint-Martin
(which used to have homeless
people's tents along the
canal), Gare du Nord, Goutte
d'Or (where there are African,
Middle Eastern, Indian
communities), and finally to
Église Saint-Bernard, where in
1996 many illegal immigrants
fought for their rights to
live in France.
MAC/VAL
The Whitworth at The University of Manchester
Art_Textiles, The Whitworth
at The University of
Manchester
October 10, 2015 – January 31,
2016
Since the 1960s, a growing
body of contemporary art
demonstrates a new engagement
with the materials and
techniques of crafts,
particularly textiles, raising
questions about the value of
the handmade in the digital
age. This show will include
artists such as Magdalena
Abakanowicz, Tracey Emin,
Grayson Perry, Ghada Amer and
Kimsooja who use textiles as a
powerful tool for expressing
ideas about the social,
political, and artistic.
Art_Textiles - runs 10 October
to 31 January 2016. Free
Entry.
The
Whitworth at The University
of Manchester
Remember Lidice at Edition
Block, Berlin, Germany
September 12, 2015 – February
13, 2016
The year 2017 will mark the
75th anniversary of the
massacre of Lidice that was
committed by the National
Socialists. In commemoration
of this incident the two
previous Lidice exhibitions
»Hommage à Lidice« (1967) and
»Pro Lidice« (1997) will be
continued by a third project
»Remember Lidice« (2015). In
response to an appeal issued
in 1967 by Sir Barnett Stross,
head of the
"Lidice-shall-live" committee,
René Block invited, both in
1967 and 1997, young artists
that were representative of
the current German art scene
to donate a work for a museum
to be built in Lidice. The
resulting collection
distinguishes itself by high
artistic quality and a cross
section of the respective
contemporary art production.
For the project »Remember
Lidice« artists have been
invited for the third time to
donate works for Lidice. With
this chapter, the frame of
reference will once more be
broadened: What started out as
a German-Czech issue with the
contributions of 21
West-German artists in 1967
(»Hommage à Lidice«), and
continued in 1997 as a project
of a united Germany with
contributions from 31 artists
(»Pro Lidice«), will in 2015
become an international
subject matter, with the
participation of 44
international artists. The
wish to expand the collection
in Lidice, which is currently
exhibited in the former
community centre now
reconstructed as a museum, by
the newly donated works is
meant to be a renewed gesture
of solidarity. Beginning in
September, the works will
successively be collected in
the exhibition space of
Edition Block and can be seen
there until February 2016. The
once completed collection will
also be shown at the
Kunsthalle Mannheim before it
will officially be handed over
to Lidice.
Edition
Block
Experiments with Truth:
Gandhi and Images of
Nonviolence, Crescent Museum,
Geneva, Switzerland
April 15, 2015 – January 3,
2016
Nonviolence immediately calls
to mind a face, a smile, an
easily recognizable figure:
Mahatma Gandhi.
In 1927 Gandhi published an autobiography entitled “My experiments with truth.” The title refers to satyagraha, the “force of truth,” the cornerstone of civil disobedience that he championed and exemplified throughout his life. A milestone of nonviolent thought and action, Gandhi’s life story was the natural choice for the guiding principle and title of an exhibition on the art of nonviolence.
Gandhi’s personal, spiritual, ethical and political journey is illustrated in its entire complexity through a large number of documents, which include a remarkable series of photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson. The exhibition also reveals, however, the extent of his legacy: Experiments with Truth presents nonviolence as a powerful inspirational force in the visual arts. With around one hundred items on display, the exhibition initiates a dialogue between cultures, the arts and techniques: tantric paintings, Koran parchments, Jain sculptures, Byzantine icons. Contemporary artists such as Marlene Dumas, Dan Flavin, Amar Kanwar, Kimsooja, Yves Klein, Robert Rauschenberg, and Ai Weiwei also take up the messages of nonviolence.
Experiments with Truth. Gandhi and Images of Nonviolence is organized by The Menil Collection, Houston.
Chambres d'enfants at Musée du
Papier Peints, Mézières,
Switzerland
September 26, 2015 – May 29,
2016
In collaboration with the Museum
wallpaper Rixheim (F) and the
works of Hugo Brülhart, Vincent
Kohler, Isabelle Krieg, Ursula
Palla, Kimsooja, Gerda Steiner
& Jörg Lenzlinger and
theatrical performances videos
of our children
The exhibition is dedicated to
the realm of children in the
context of the universe of
nature. In the 19th century, the
perception of the early years
have seen a change towards a new
"culture of sentiment". An
enriched bourgeoisie treats
health and children's education.
This one gets in the bourgeois
homes, a room of its own. The
designers are beginning to
provide furniture and
decorations that combine
education and fun to feed the
imagination of the child. From
the introduction of compulsory
schooling in the last quarter of
the 19th century, the children
of the working classes have the
chance to see an education.
However, the workers and
peasants communities, parents
and children are often crowded
into one or two rooms with
little privacy. From the first
third of the 20th century, the
nursery moved at progressively
in all areas of society. Today
in our era of globalization,
thousands of people are moving,
homeless without home, without
individual room. The migration
peaked akin to that of the
second world war.
The exhibition presents a
selection of wallpapers from the
18th to the 20th century
children's room from the
Wallpaper Museum Rixheim. One
can also discover inter
interventions by contemporary
artists on the theme of nature,
a venture of intimacy, the
childlike and playful spirit
that we all carry within us. It
also involves our contemporary
reality with a major focus on
global migration.
Musée
du Papier Peint
Kimsooja
- To Breathe
Centre
Pompidou-Metz
Kimsooja - To Breathe
Centre Pompidou-Metz, France
October 26, 2015 – January 4,
2016
To mark France's Korean year, a
site-specific installation by
the multidisciplinary conceptual
artist Kimsooja invites viewers
to partake in a transformative
performance of light, sound, and
the architecture of Centre
Pompidou-Metz.
For the past thirty years,
Kimsooja has conceived a body of
work often described as
conceptual, humanist, and
ethical. It transcends current
issues of identity, migration,
ideological and physical divide
across people and borders, to
find expression in a visual
poetry and a life-performance
resting beyond material
conditions and the act of
making.
To Breathe is an invitation to
contemplate. Its unfolding and
mirroring of light into a fully
visible iridescent spectrum
establish a tri-dimensional
tableau, a revelation of one's
body in space and time that
defies horizontality and
verticality. Kimsooja's enduring
examination of dualism in life
and art transforms elements of
painting into a new language of
light, sound, and reflections in
pursuit of totality.
Centre
Pompidou-Metz
Kimsooja - To Breathe, Centre Pompidou-Metz
Kimsooja - To Breathe,
Centre Pompidou-Metz,
Metz, France
October 26, 2015 – January
4, 2016
To Breathe and its latest
installment at Centre
Pompidou Metz seeks to be
the sum of the artist's
early meditation on
painting, where the
surface of the canvas is
intuited to become a
mirror that wraps
identity, space, and time;
and where brushstrokes are
destined to dematerialize
into a splitting of light.
For this exhibition
Kimsooja takes on the
spaces of Centre Pompidou
Metz's ingenuous
architecture to create a
three-dimensional tableau
that transforms a long
span of the museum's
gallery and its bay
windows into a liquid-like
mirrored surface, that the
artist expressed to be in
previous installations an
ever-expanding "fabric
that is sewn by our gaze1."
Thinking of mirrors as an
opportunity to fold and
unfold spaces (A
continuation of the
artist's involvement with
the Korean tradition of
wrapping belongings into
travel bundles known as
Bottari in Korean),
Kimsooja first made use of
mirrors for Harald
Szeemann's 1999 Venice
Biennale where she
reflected a loaded truck
onto a wall sized mirror
that provided a virtual
exit for the vehicle. The
piece was dedicated to the
refugees of Kosovo. She
further explored infinite
spaces by installing
mirrors on the walls of a
laundry installation of
abandoned Korean bedcovers
for A Mirror Woman
(2002), and pointed to the
migratory perspective
opened by mirrors while
reflecting the sky on the
ground of her mirrored
installation The
Ground to Nowhere
(Honolulu City Hall,
2003). Always in search of
wrapping space and time,
Kimsooja enveloped the
transparent building
structure of the Palacio
de Cristal in Madrid with
mirrors and diffraction
films (To
Breathe/Respirare, 2006);
and the Korean Pavilion in
Venice with diffracting
spectrums and reflective
surfaces (To Breathe:
Bottari, 2013) that
invited the audience into
a journey inside and
outside of themselves, and
into a poetic space where
our perception of light,
color and orientation is
deconstructed and exposed
as an unfolding plane.
To Breathe,
performed for the Centre
Pompidou Metz spans the
museum's entrance forum
area, the 80 meters long
Gallery 2, and the breadth
of the opposite ends of
two bay windows. The space
of the museum's gallery
will find its utmost
expression as a tableau:
from the windows light is
split, to be reflected on
an almost liquid surface
and reunited inside the
projection of the artist's
video piece To
Breathe: a series
of digital monochromes
accompanied by the sound
of a chorus of the
artist's inhalation and
exhalation.
Kimsooja's everlasting
examination of the dualism
of light and surface,
sewing and weaving,
wrapping and unwrapping;
her transposition of the
concept of point as the
pin of a needle and that
of line as a thread, and
of plane as the reflecting
surface of a mirror,
questions the foundation
of materiality as it
pertains to migration and
exile, and exposes the
complex relations of art
and humanity, cultural and
political existence.
1In An
Interview with Kimsooja,
Olivia Maria Rubio, 2006,
on the occasion of To
Breathe/Respirare, Palacio
de Cristal, Parque del
Retiro, Madrid
Centre
Pompidou-Metz
Exhibition from the Collection MAC/VAL, Paris
Exhibition from the
Collection, MAC/VAL, Paris
October 24, 2015– January
2016
Opening Reception: Friday
October 23, 2015
Kimsooja's video piece
records a performance in
Paris in which she evokes
the constant state of
migration that
characterizes our global
society. The Bottari Truck
loaded local immigrants'
bedcovers and used
clothing donated from all
over Paris on top of an
old Peugeot pick-up truck.
Kim started her
"migration" from Place de
la Liberation, where Musée
MAC/VAL, which
commissioned the piece, is
located, and which is also
on the border of the area
of Paris where many
immigrants from China, the
Middle East, Africa and
Eastern Europe live. The
truck moved through the
neighborhoods of Paris,
each containing a
different history of
immigrants to France: Ivry
(where there is a Chinese
community), Place d'Italy,
Bastille, Place de la
Republic, Canal
Saint-Martin (which used
to have homeless people's
tents along the canal),
Gare du Nord, Goutte d'Or
(where there are African,
Middle Eastern, Indian
communities), and finally
to Église Saint-Bernard,
where in 1996 many illegal
immigrants fought for
their rights to live in
France.
MAC/VAL
Kimsooja,
A Beggar Woman - Cairo
Smith College Museum of
Art, Massachussets
Kimsooja, A Beggar
Woman - Cairo,
Smith College Museum of
Art, Northampton,
Massachusets
October 9 – November 8,
2015
A Beggar Woman - Cairo
is one of three videos in
the Beggar Woman series of
2000–2001, including
performances on the
streets of Mexico City and
Lagos.
A Beggar Woman -
Cairo was purchased
with the gift of Jungkoo
An and Ae Young Han, in
honor of their daughter,
Sabina An, class of 2016;
an anonymous gift; and
funds from the
Contemporary Associates.
This video is the
inaugural work shown in
the Museum's New Media
Gallery on the lower
level.
Smith
College Museum of Art
The Whitworth at The University of Manchester
October 10, 2015 - January 31, 2016
Art_Textiles, The
Whitworth at The
University of Manchester
October 10, 2015 – January
31, 2016
Since the 1960s, a growing
body of contemporary art
demonstrates a new
engagement with the
materials and techniques
of crafts, particularly
textiles, raising
questions about the value
of the handmade in the
digital age. This show
will include artists such
as Magdalena Abakanowicz,
Tracey Emin, Grayson
Perry, Ghada Amer and
Kimsooja who use textiles
as a powerful tool for
expressing ideas about the
social, political, and
artistic.
Art_Textiles - runs 10
October to 31 January
2016. Free Entry.
The
Whitworth at The
University of Manchester
May 9 - November 22, 2015
PROPORTIO, Axel and May
Vervoordt Foundation,
Palazzo Fortuni, Venice
May 9 – November 22, 2015
The exhibition PROPORTIO
examines the role that
proportion plays in our
lives and the complex
universe in which we live.
By examining wide-ranging
and diverse
representations found in
art, nature, physics,
economics, history,
science, music, medicine,
and many other subjects,
the study of proportion
uncovers the natural
patterns that are used to
create everything in the
material world. Proportion
is not only a question of
numbers. Nor is it a
simple comparison of
measurements and
dimensions in relation to
a whole. According to
Plato, the definition of
proportion is the
transition from duality to
unity. It's the
investigation of how
elements and patterns are
connected and
interconnected across
disciplines. It's the
investigation of how we,
as humans, perceive those
patterns through our
senses, as well as through
our intuition. It's also
an exploration of how
universal proportions
guide our understanding of
creation and the dynamic
dance between order and
chaos.
Throughout the course of
known human history, the
knowledge of proportions
and sacred geometry in
particular, has been
applied across many
civilizations for
thousands of years. The
sophisticated knowledge of
sacred geometry,
especially the golden
ratio, was considered
highly advanced and
closely related to
secretive spiritual wisdom
and religious traditions.
As a result, its use was
controlled, because it was
thought that it's misuse
might have undesirable
consequences. In the
Western world, the
knowledge of sacred
geometry was so secret
that it was intentionally
guarded for hundreds of
years and may have been
purposefully forgotten or
discarded.
What was known? How was
this knowledge used in the
past? How can it help us
to understand the world
around us today? As an
exhibition, the aim of
PROPORTIO is to re-start a
contemporary dialogue
surrounding the lost
knowledge of proportions
and sacred geometry.
PROPORTIO features
specially commissioned
artworks by contemporary
artists, 20th century
masterpieces, Old Master
paintings, archaeological
artifacts, as well as
architectural models and a
large library of
historical books on
proportions. All these
works provide a lens to
help us see what
proportion can teach us
about the essential design
of the present and how we
can use this knowledge to
create a blueprint for the
future. This exhibition is
an opportunity to explore
universal proportions and
an invitation to reflect
upon the
interconnectedness of our
universe.
Axel
and May Vervoordt
Foundation
April 15 - January 3, 2016
Experiments with Truth:
Gandhi and Images of
Nonviolence, Crescent
Museum, Geneva,
Switzerland
April 15, 2015 – January
3, 2016
Nonviolence immediately
calls to mind a face, a
smile, an easily
recognizable figure:
Mahatma Gandhi.
In 1927 Gandhi published an autobiography entitled “My experiments with truth.” The title refers to satyagraha, the “force of truth,” the cornerstone of civil disobedience that he championed and exemplified throughout his life. A milestone of nonviolent thought and action, Gandhi’s life story was the natural choice for the guiding principle and title of an exhibition on the art of nonviolence.
Gandhi’s personal, spiritual, ethical and political journey is illustrated in its entire complexity through a large number of documents, which include a remarkable series of photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson. The exhibition also reveals, however, the extent of his legacy: Experiments with Truth presents nonviolence as a powerful inspirational force in the visual arts. With around one hundred items on display, the exhibition initiates a dialogue between cultures, the arts and techniques: tantric paintings, Koran parchments, Jain sculptures, Byzantine icons. Contemporary artists such as Marlene Dumas, Dan Flavin, Amar Kanwar, Kimsooja, Yves Klein, Robert Rauschenberg, and Ai Weiwei also take up the messages of nonviolence.
Experiments with Truth. Gandhi and Images of Nonviolence is organized by The Menil Collection, Houston.
We are proud to announce that
KIMSOOA is awarded the HO-AM
PRIZE 2015 IN ARTS
(Ho-Am Foundation in Seoul).
We congratulate Kimsooja for
this deserving prize and
recognition.
The Prize Award Ceremony will
take place on 1 June 2015, at
3:00 pm, at Ho-Am Art Hall, in
Seoul.
For further information please
visit: http://hoamprize.samsungfoundation.org/eng/award/thisyear.asp
Kimsooja at PROPORTIO, Palazzo Fortuni, Venice
PROPORTIO, Axel and May Vervoordt Foundation, Palazzo Fortuni, Venice
May 9 – November 22, 2015
The exhibition PROPORTIO examines the role that proportion plays in our lives and the complex universe in which we live. By examining wide-ranging and diverse representations found in art, nature, physics, economics, history, science, music, medicine, and many other subjects, the study of proportion uncovers the natural patterns that are used to create everything in the material world.
Proportion is not only a question of numbers. Nor is it a simple comparison of measurements and dimensions in relation to a whole. According to Plato, the definition of proportion is the transition from duality to unity. It's the investigation of how elements and patterns are connected and interconnected across disciplines. It's the investigation of how we, as humans, perceive those patterns through our senses, as well as through our intuition. It's also an exploration of how universal proportions guide our understanding of creation and the dynamic dance between order and chaos.
Throughout the course of known human history, the knowledge of proportions and sacred geometry in particular, has been applied across many civilizations for thousands of years. The sophisticated knowledge of sacred geometry, especially the golden ratio, was considered highly advanced and closely related to secretive spiritual wisdom and religious traditions. As a result, its use was controlled, because it was thought that it's misuse might have undesirable consequences. In the Western world, the knowledge of sacred geometry was so secret that it was intentionally guarded for hundreds of years and may have been purposefully forgotten or discarded.
What was known? How was this knowledge used in the past? How can it help us to understand the world around us today? As an exhibition, the aim of PROPORTIO is to re-start a contemporary dialogue surrounding the lost knowledge of proportions and sacred geometry.
PROPORTIO features specially commissioned artworks by contemporary artists, 20th century masterpieces, Old Master paintings, archaeological artefacts, as well as architectural models and a large library of historical books on proportions. All these works provide a lens to help us see what proportion can teach us about the essential design of the present and how we can use this knowledge to create a blueprint for the future. This exhibition is an opportunity to explore universal proportions and an invitation to reflect upon the interconnectedness of our universe.
LIST OF PARTICIPATING ARTIST
Marina Abramovic, Carla Accardi, Josef Albers, Carl Andre, Rodolfo Aricò, Ida Barbarigo, Massimo Bartolini, Domenico Bianchi, Cristiano Bianchin, Alberto Biasi, Bae Bien-U, Alighiero Boetti, Otto Boll, Agostino Bonalumi, Michaël Borremans, Sandro Botticelli, Lucia Bru, Markus Brunetti, Jean-Marie Bytebier, Pierpaolo Calzolari, Francesco Candeloro, Antonio Canova, Vincenzo Castella, Eduardo Chillida, Chang-Sup Chung, Niccolò Codazzi, Viviano Codazzi, Gianni Colombo, Dadamaino, Hanne Darboven, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Raoul De Keyser, Riccardo De Marchi, Marta Dell'Angelo, Gabriele Devecchi, Maurizio Donzelli, Jan Dries, Arthur Duff, Luciano Fabro, Philippe Favier, Giorgia Fiorio, Henri Foucault, Anne-Karin Furunes, Alberto Giacometti, Ando Gilardi, Fernanda Gomes, Antony Gormley, Kees Goudzwaard, Gotthard Graubner, Aldo Grazzi, Franco Guerzoni, Chong Hyun Ha, Erwin Heerich, Michael Heizer, Samantha Holmes, Sadaharu Horio, Akiko Horio, Ryoji Ikeda, Norio Imai, Robert Indiana, Ann Veronica Janssens, Francesco Jodice, Ilya et Emilia Kabakov, Anish Kapoor, Ellsworth Kelly, William Kentridge, Anselm Kiefer, Kimsooja, Harry Kivijärvi, Susan Kleinberg, Wolfgang Laib, Edoardo Landi, Le Corbusier, Sol Lewitt, Richard Long, Nino Longobardi, Heinz Mack, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Christian Megert, Richard Meier, Fausto Melotti, Marisa Merz, Mario Merz, Amedeo Modigliani, Giorgio Morandi, François Morellet, Shuji Mukai, Rei Naito, Yuko Nasaka, Shirin Neshat, Louise Nevelson, Ben Nicholson, Renato Nicolodi, Mario Nigro, Gioberto Noro, Hans Op de Beeck, Marie Orensanz, Mimmo Paladino, Pablo Palazuelo, Izhar Patkin, Masaomi Raku, Kurt Ralske, Robert Ryman, Lucio Saffaro, Fred Sandback, Giuseppe Santomaso, Tomás Saraceno, MariaTeresa Sartori, Stéphane Sautour, Nobuo Sekine, Conrad Shawcross, Yasuhiro Shimakawa, Kazuo Shiraga, Gabriel Sierra, David Simpson, Bosco Sodi, Ettore Spalletti, Dominique Stroobant, Takis, Antoni Tàpies, Marco Tirelli, Gunther Uecker, Camiel Van Breedam, Koen Van den Broek, Dom Hans Van der Laan, Koen Vanmechelen, Grazia Varisco, Victor Vasarely, Jef Verheyen, Nanda Vigo, Bill Viola, Rachel Whiteread, Maaria Wirkkala, Hyong-Keun Yun, Gianfranco Zappettini and Raphaël Zarka.
Axel and May Vervoordt Foundation
Kimsooja - Thread Routes, Chapter III, Axel Vervoordt Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium
Axel Vervoordt Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium
April 30 – June 13, 2015
Axel Vervoordt Gallery is pleased to announce Kimsooja's first exhibition in our gallery in Antwerp presenting her most recent film and installation Thread Routes - Chapter III. This film and installation will make its Belgium premiere. The screening will be accompanied for the first time with a new experimental video that depicts the lightwaves of the film, as well as an installation of Indian block printing-table covers that the artist collected for this exhibition.
Thread Routes: Chapter lll (2010) is the third installment of the six-chapter film series produced by multidisciplinary conceptual artist Kimsooja (°1957, Daegu, Korea). The films were shot in different continents and reveal the artist gazing at the intimate link between each region's textile culture and its people, gender relations, architecture, nature and agriculture. These non-narrative films invite the viewer into a realm that explores the boundaries of poetry and visual anthropology.
Thread Routes: Chapter lll was filmed in India in 2012. It features traditional dyeing, knitting, embroidery, block printing, and tattooing; the archeological sites and the temporary dwellings belonging to nomadic communities in the state of Gujarat; as well as two landmarks of Indian architecture: the Queen's Stepwell and the Modhera Sun Temple, near the city of Ahmedabad.
For this exhibition at Axel Vervoordt Gallery, Kimsooja has collected the under layers of the block print tables where Indian workers have repeatedly stamped patterns of indigo ink. These textiles bear the marks of repetitive labor and their patterns exposing an intricate layer of ink that ties to the artist's early experiments with painting. The intimate relationship between these acts of labor and the patterns of the fabrics parallels the carved stones of archeological sites filmed in Thread Routes- Chapter lll, and also recall Kimsooja's previous laundry installations and film-work shot in Mumbai called "Mumbai: A Laundery Field." The sound track of the film's protagonists in the act of printing and stamping echoes throughout the installation, where the light data of the film is digitally woven in a new experimental video piece composed of spectral lightwaves.
Thread Routes reveals how the artist gazes at the world: unfolding visual patterns that intimately tie humans to their land. Kimsooja investigates questions relating to the human condition such as nomadism, migration, interpersonal relationships, and women's role in society. She also engages her audience with a reflection on the relations of aesthetics and global politics through a system of beliefs that defies mobility and the act of making. All these themes are present in her multidisciplinary art practice, which includes performance, video, photography, drawing, sculpture, and site-specific installations, that are all linked towards their relational use of light and sound.
Axel Vervoordt Gallery
Kimsooja:
Thread Routes,
Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain
Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain
Curated by Alvaro Rodriguez
Fominaya
March 12 – July 12, 2015
From March 12 through July 12,
2015, Kimsooja's Thread
Routes will make its Spanish
premiere at the Guggenheim
Museum Bilbao, becoming the
fourth installation showcased
in the Museum's Film &
Video gallery. The gallery
opened in 2014 and is
dedicated to video art, video
installation, and the moving
image.
Thread Routes (2010–)
is a 16-mm film series
produced by multidisciplinary
conceptual artist Kimsooja (b.
1957, Daegu, Korea). This six
chapter project functions as
an epic poem that closely
contemplates the handiwork of
weavers as the seminal
structure of all that is
labored, built, imagined and
witnessed through the artist's
silent gaze. The three
chapters from the series
showing at Guggenheim
Bilbao were shot on three
different continents and
reveal the artist's
fascination with the unfolding
of space, the piercing gesture
of the weaving hands as
the genesis of agriculture,
architecture and gender
relations. These non-narrative
films invite the viewer into a
realm of poetry and visual
anthropology, and carry out
Kimsooja's earlier meditations
on sewing and wrapping.
A site-specific triangular
installation was created by
the artist for the Guggenheim
Bilbao, and will feature the
first three chapters of the
six-chapter-long series,
filmed in Peru, Europe, and
India, respectively. The first
film, shot in 2010, follows
weavers from the Sacred Valley
of the Incas in the Peruvian
Andes to the villages of
Taquile Island, and quietly
unfolds the immensity of the
mountainous land as a possible
man-made patchwork. The second
chapter, filmed in 2011,
focuses on the handcrafting of
bobbin lace in Bruges,
Belgium; Lepoglava, Pag and
Hvar, Croatia; Burano, Italy;
as well as the industrial lace
production in Calais, a town
in northern France. These
images of European lacemakers
are paralleled to
architectural structures such
as the Sedlec Ossuary in Kutná
Hora, Czech Republic; the
Eiffel Tower in Paris; the
Milan Cathedral; and the
Alhambra in Granada, with its
Islamic geometric motifs. The
third chapter was filmed in
India in 2012 and features
traditional dyeing, knitting,
embroidery, block printing,
and tattooing, intercut with
images of archeological sites
and the temporary dwellings
belonging to nomadic
communities in the state of
Gujarat; as well as
two landmarks of Indian
architecture: the Queen's
Stepwell and the Modhera Sun
Temple, near the city of
Ahmedabad.
Thread Routes reveals how the
artist gazes at the world:
unfolding patterns that
intimately tie humans to their
land. The series' remaining
three chapters will feature
the Miao, Tong, and Yi
minorities in China, and the
native tribes of North America
and Northern Africa.
Kimsooja for the last thirty
years has investigated
questions relating to exile
and migration, interpersonal
relationships within a global
network, and women's role in
society. She also engages her
audience through a body of
performances that defies
mobility and the act
of making. All these themes
are present in her
multidisciplinary art
practice, which includes
performance, video,
photography, drawing,
sculpture, and site-specific
installations, that are all
linked through their
relational use of light and
sound.
Thread Routes stands as the
artist's ultimate worldview.
One that unites anthropology
and animism, human and
non-human forms, and brings a
highly attentive gaze to the
manifold that inhabits the
movement of all that ties and
animates the fabric of our
world.
View
More Installation Images
Here
Guggenheim
Bilbao
Earth-Water-Fire-Air,
The XIV Biennial of
Photography of Cordoba,
Spain
Sala Orive, Cordoba, Spain
Curated by Oliva Maria Rubio
March 14 – May 17, 2015
In the video installation Earth-Water-Fire-Air, 2009-2010, Kimsooja addresses four elements, used by various philosophers since ancient times, the last designated entities that constitute the material reality, both Western and Eastern tradition: earth, water, fire, air, as a source of energy and life. Always linked to a symbolic, these four elements, dating from the time of the Presocratics, receiving its most precise formulation Empedocles, persist through the Middle Ages to the Modern Era, profoundly influencing culture and European thought . Also coincide with the Indian and Japanese traditions, which, as did Aristotle added a fifth element, ether (or continent cosmos), and the Buddhist tradition. In some Asian countries such as Korea or China, wind replaces the air.
The six videos that make up
the installation, which are
titled Fuego de Tierra / Fire
of Earth, Agua de Tierra /
Water of Earth, Fuego de Aire
/ Fire of Air, Tierra de Agua
/ Earth of Water, Aire de
Fuego / Air of Fire, and Aire
de Tierra / Air of Earth, were
filmed on the island of
Lanzarote in 2009. In nature
and oceanic volcanic island,
the artist has found strength
and inspiration from these
elements, the energy that is:
elements of life, we depend on
all living beings, but also
invitation to fantasy, source
of activity creator. Kimsooja
makes us see fire in the
water, land on water, wind in
the water and therefore also
the opposite: water in the
wind, water in the soil, water
on the fire. In a way, as the
artist says, the water would
suffice to represent the four
elements even though you might
think that each of these
elements only supports a
single and separate
representation.
The exhibition is complemented
by a series entitled The Sun
Unfolded, 2008, a set of 6
photographs in which the sun
displays the color spectrum
light rays extending in
concentric waves around.
Cordoba
La
Fabrica
Experiments
with Truth: Gandhi and
Images of Nonviolence,
International Red Cross and
Red Crescent Museum, Geneva,
Switzerland
International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum, Geneva, Switzerland
April 15, 2015 – January 3, 2016
Nonviolence immediately calls to mind a face, a smile, an easily recognizable figure: Mahatma Gandhi.
In 1927 Gandhi published an autobiography entitled "My experiments with truth." The title refers to satyagraha, the "force of truth," the cornerstone of civil disobedience that he championed and exemplified throughout his life. A milestone of nonviolent thought and action, Gandhi's life story was the natural choice for the guiding principle and title of an exhibition on the art of nonviolence.
Gandhi's personal, spiritual, ethical and political journey is illustrated in its entire complexity through a large number of documents, which include a remarkable series of photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson. The exhibition also reveals, however, the extent of his legacy: Experiments with Truth presents nonviolence as a powerful inspirational force in the visual arts. With around one hundred items on display, the exhibition initiates a dialogue between cultures, the arts and techniques: tantric paintings, Koran parchments, Jain sculptures, Byzantine icons. Contemporary artists such as Marlene Dumas, Dan Flavin, Amar Kanwar, Kimsooja, Yves Klein, Robert Rauschenberg, and Ai Weiwei also take up the messages of nonviolence.
Experiments with Truth. Gandhi and Images of Nonviolence is organized by The Menil Collection, Houston.
The Menil Collection
International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum
Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain
Curated by Alvaro Rodriguez Fominaya
March 12 – July 12, 2015
From March 12 through July 12, 2015, Kimsooja's Thread Routes will make its Spanish premiere at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, becoming the fourth installation showcased in the Museum's Film & Video gallery. The gallery opened in 2014 and is dedicated to video art, video installation, and the moving image.
Thread Routes (2010–) is a 16-mm film series produced by multidisciplinary conceptual artist Kimsooja (b. 1957, Daegu, Korea). This six chapter project functions as an epic poem that closely contemplates the handiwork of weavers as the seminal structure of all that is labored, built, imagined and witnessed through the artist's silent gaze. The three chapters from the series showing at Guggenheim Bilbao were shot on three different continents and reveal the artist's fascination with the unfolding of space, the piercing gesture of the weaving hands as the genesis of agriculture, architecture and gender relations. These non-narrative films invite the viewer into a realm of poetry and visual anthropology, and carry out Kimsooja's earlier meditations on sewing and wrapping.
A site-specific triangular installation was created by the artist for the Guggenheim Bilbao, and will feature the first three chapters of the six-chapter-long series, filmed in Peru, Europe, and India, respectively. The first film, shot in 2010, follows weavers from the Sacred Valley of the Incas in the Peruvian Andes to the villages of Taquile Island, and quietly unfolds the immensity of the mountainous land as a possible man-made patchwork. The second chapter, filmed in 2011, focuses on the handcrafting of bobbin lace in Bruges, Belgium; Lepoglava, Pag and Hvar, Croatia; Burano, Italy; as well as the industrial lace production in Calais, a town in northern France. These images of European lacemakers are paralleled to architectural structures such as the Sedlec Ossuary in Kutná Hora, Czech Republic; the Eiffel Tower in Paris; the Milan Cathedral; and the Alhambra in Granada, with its Islamic geometric motifs. The third chapter was filmed in India in 2012 and features traditional dyeing, knitting, embroidery, block printing, and tattooing, intercut with images of archeological sites and the temporary dwellings belonging to nomadic communities in the state of Gujarat; as well as two landmarks of Indian architecture: the Queen's Stepwell and the Modhera Sun Temple, near the city of Ahmedabad.
Thread Routes reveals how the artist gazes at the world: unfolding patterns that intimately tie humans to their land. The series' remaining three chapters will feature the Miao, Tong, and Yi minorities in China, and the native tribes of North America and Northern Africa.
Kimsooja for the last thirty years has investigated questions relating to exile and migration, interpersonal relationships within a global network, and women's role in society. She also engages her audience through a body of performances that defies mobility and the act of making. All these themes are present in her multidisciplinary art practice, which includes performance, video, photography, drawing, sculpture, and site-specific installations, that are all linked through their relational use of light and sound.
Thread Routes stands as the artist's ultimate worldview. One that unites anthropology and animism, human and non-human forms, and brings a highly attentive gaze to the manifold that inhabits the movement of all that ties and animates the fabric of our world.
Guggenheim Bilbao
Earth-Water-Fire-Air,
The XIV Biennial of
Photography of Cordoba,
Spain
Sala Orive, Cordoba, Spain
Curated by Oliva Maria Rubio
March 14 – May 17, 2015
In the video installation Earth-Water-Fire-Air, 2009-2010, Kimsooja addresses four elements, used by various philosophers since ancient times, the last designated entities that constitute the material reality, both Western and Eastern tradition: earth, water, fire, air, as a source of energy and life. Always linked to a symbolic, these four elements, dating from the time of the Presocratics, receiving its most precise formulation Empedocles, persist through the Middle Ages to the Modern Era, profoundly influencing culture and European thought . Also coincide with the Indian and Japanese traditions, which, as did Aristotle added a fifth element, ether (or continent cosmos), and the Buddhist tradition. In some Asian countries such as Korea or China, wind replaces the air.
The six videos that make
up the installation, which
are titled Fuego de Tierra
/ Fire of Earth, Agua de
Tierra / Water of Earth,
Fuego de Aire / Fire of
Air, Tierra de Agua /
Earth of Water, Aire de
Fuego / Air of Fire, and
Aire de Tierra / Air of
Earth, were filmed on the
island of Lanzarote in
2009. In nature and
oceanic volcanic island,
the artist has found
strength and inspiration
from these elements, the
energy that is: elements
of life, we depend on all
living beings, but also
invitation to fantasy,
source of activity
creator. Kimsooja makes us
see fire in the water,
land on water, wind in the
water and therefore also
the opposite: water in the
wind, water in the soil,
water on the fire. In a
way, as the artist says,
the water would suffice to
represent the four
elements even though you
might think that each of
these elements only
supports a single and
separate representation.
The exhibition is
complemented by a series
entitled The Sun Unfolded,
2008, a set of 6
photographs in which the
sun displays the color
spectrum light rays
extending in concentric
waves around.
Cordoba
La
Fabrica
To
Breathe: Obangsaek,
Galerie Tschudi,
Zouz, Switzerand
Galerie Tschudi
Zuoz, Switzerland
December 23, 2014 – March 14, 2015
Obangsaek is the Korean color field that represents the nature of the universe. Signifying the four cardinal points and the center, the five colors of Obang (directionality) and Saek (color) draw from the philosophies of the cultures that originally formed the Ural-Altaic linguistic family. The theory of the colors derives from the relationships of Yin and Yang, Confucianism and Taoism. Obangsaek assigns elements of nature, flavors, wishes, desires and characteristics of human nature to each of the colors. Yellow at the center, signifies universe, earth, power and dignity. East (blue) represents wood, spring and happiness. West (white) is metal, autumn, innocence and truthfulness. South (red) is known as the color for summer, fire, creativity and passion. North (black) is water and winter, intelligence and wisdom. The color spectrum presented in this exhibition is a secondary color spectrum associated with the symbolic Obangsaek color field.
Galerie Tschudi is pleased to present To Breathe: Obangsaek by acclaimed multi disciplinary conceptual artist, Kimsooja. The exhibition, which is the artists' second solo at Galerie Tschudi, includes several new works and many others that have never been shown in Europe. To Breathe: Obangsaek explores the artist's ongoing questions as a painter and Obangsaek theory, which has led her to move beyond the surface to the activation of space as an experience of light in such site-specific installations as The Crystal Palace in Madrid, the Korean Pavilion at the 55th Biennale di Venezia and most recently in A Needle Woman: Galaxy was a Memory, Earth is a Souvenir at Cornell University, New York.
The exhibition title comes from the site-specific installation, To Breathe: Obangsaek which was first realized as part of "The Lift" elevator wallpaper project, organized by Art21 at the Bloomberg building in New York in 2013. In this installation, wallpaper printed with obangsaek pattern envelops the viewer, activating the body as the fifth element of directionality—the center. In other rooms Deductive Object: Obangsaek (2014) carpets—similar to those used in Korean weddings—roll up or stretch out, leading directionality in relation to bodies and their journeys. Similarly, the Seven Wishes (2004) print portfolio translates the cardinal points of Obangsaek into wishes that connect to the sensory and emotional experience of humanity as a symbolic frame of human life.
Moving from an autobiographical approach to reach universality in her use of bedcovers, Kimsooja expands her exploration to a global context in To Breathe - The Flags (2012), as a frame of nationhood that leads to transnational status. In this video piece, 246 national flags dissolve in a continuous loop, their iconic surfaces morphing into one another. In the first iteration of this work, which was commissioned by the IOC Olympic Museum, Lausanne for the 2012 London Olympic Games, the artist layered the flags of all the participating countries in a reflection of the unifying spirit of the games. In To Breathe – The Flags, this proposition is expanded to include all of the world's national flags in alphabetical order without hierarchy or political prejudice, in the hope of creating a visual experience whereby national difference and conflicts can be merged and harmonized as one.
Drawing us back from the symbolic to the essence of humans and life, the video works Fire of Air (2009) and Mirror of Air (2010) are extracts from the artist's explorations of the elemental forces of nature and their relationship of mutual circulation and connection. This powerful presence of matter is questioned by the tiny voids in sand created by crabs' regurgitation on a beach near the Yonggwang nuclear power station, as depicted in the Architecture of Vulnerability (2010-2013) lightbox series. These images of an elemental structure of presence and absence created by nature, recall the relationship of Yin and Yang to the human body, which has been a central concern of Kimsooja's work for many years.
An Album: Hudson Guild (2009) simultaneously evokes a sense of past, present and future through video portraits of elderly people at Hudson Guild Community Center in New York. The figures—who appear at times facing the viewer and at times with backs turned, respond by turning to face the camera when the artist calls their names, recalling the memory of her deceased father.
Deductive Object: Unfolding Bottari (1991-2014) includes 223 images taken by the artist at flea markets around the world. Accumulated, the vulnerability of objects in a moment of transition questions the destination of human desire and that of possession.
All of Kimsooja's investigations are contextualized from the processes of mundane daily acts such as sewing, weaving, wrapping and unfolding that begin with her gaze as a painter and expands towards all possible directionalities.
The multiple directionality of the artist's gaze actively draws the delicate thread that she follows so compellingly in the Thread Routes series. In this series, the films function as a structural investigation into the similarities in performative elements of textile construction and their relationship to nature, architecture, agriculture and gender relationships across cultures and geographic zones.
For the first time in Europe, Kimsooja will present Thread Routes – Chapter II (2011) which is the second in the six part series of films shot on 16mm. Filmed in various European cities, the film depicts a wide variety of lace making techniques, woven together with images of delicate yet grand European structures such as the Duomo in Milan, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Sedlec Ossuary in Kutna Hora and La Alhambra in Granada. The bold, masculine and power-oriented monumental architectural forms and structures are juxtaposed with the delicate, feminine and ephemeral lace making alongside the structure of local flowers and vegetation.
Since the late 70s, Kimsooja has transformed and redefined the notion of painting into object/sculptural pieces, performance, video, and site-specific sound and light installations. Her innovation has been to question the surface/tableau, self and the other; dealing with existential, natural, cultural and political borders from the concept of obangsaek and its dimensionality with relation to the artist's body in the world; contextualizing her own concepts in parallel to Western art history.
Galerie
Tschudi
Chesa Madalena |
Somvih 115 | 7524
Zuoz | Switzerland
Tel. +41 81 850 13
90 |
www.galerie-tschudi.ch
To Breathe: Obangsaek
Galerie Tschudi
Zuoz, Switzerland
December 23, 2014 – March 14, 2015
Opening Saturday, December 20, 4 - 6.30pm
Galerie
Tschudi is pleased to
present To Breathe:
Obangsaek by
acclaimed multi disciplinary
conceptual artist, Kimsooja.
The exhibition, which is the
artists' second solo at
Galerie Tschudi, includes
several new works and many
others that have never been
shown in Europe. To
Breathe: Obangsaek
explores the artist's
ongoing questions as a
painter and Obangsaek
theory, which has led her to
move beyond the surface to
the activation of space as
an experience of light in
such site-specific
installations as The Crystal
Palace in Madrid, the Korean
Pavilion at the 55th
Biennale di Venezia and most
recently in A Needle
Woman: Galaxy was a
Memory, Earth is a
Souvenir at Cornell
University, New York.
The exhibition title comes
from the site-specific
installation, To
Breathe: Obangsaek
which was first realized as
part of "The Lift" elevator
wallpaper project, organized
by Art21 at the Bloomberg
building in New York in
2013. In this installation,
wallpaper printed with
obangsaek pattern envelops
the viewer, activating the
body as the fifth element of
directionality—the center.
In other rooms Deductive
Object: Obangsaek
(2014) carpets—similar to
those used in Korean
weddings—roll up or stretch
out, leading directionality
in relation to bodies and
their journeys. Similarly,
the Seven Wishes
(2004) print portfolio
translates the cardinal
points of Obangsaek into
wishes that connect to the
sensory and emotional
experience of humanity as a
symbolic frame of human
life.
Moving from an
autobiographical approach to
reach universality in her
use of bedcovers, Kimsooja
expands her exploration to a
global context in To
Breathe - The Flags
(2012), as a frame of
nationhood that leads to
transnational status. In
this video piece, 246
national flags dissolve in a
continuous loop, their
iconic surfaces morphing
into one another. In the
first iteration of this
work, which was commissioned
by the IOC Olympic Museum,
Lausanne for the 2012 London
Olympic Games, the artist
layered the flags of all the
participating countries in a
reflection of the unifying
spirit of the games. In To
Breathe – The Flags,
this proposition is expanded
to include all of the
world's national flags in
alphabetical order without
hierarchy or political
prejudice, in the hope of
creating a visual experience
whereby national difference
and conflicts can be merged
and harmonized as one.
Drawing us back from the
symbolic to the essence of
humans and life, the video
works Fire of Air
(2009) and Mirror of
Air (2010) are
extracts from the artist's
explorations of the
elemental forces of nature
and their relationship of
mutual circulation and
connection. This powerful
presence of matter is
questioned by the tiny voids
in sand created by crabs'
regurgitation on a beach
near the Yonggwang nuclear
power station, as depicted
in the Architecture of
Vulnerability
(2010-2013) lightbox series.
These images of an elemental
structure of presence and
absence created by nature,
recall the relationship of
Yin and Yang to the human
body, which has been a
central concern of
Kimsooja's work for many
years.
An Album: Hudson Guild
(2009) simultaneously evokes
a sense of past, present and
future through video
portraits of elderly people
at Hudson Guild Community
Center in New York. The
figures—who appear at times
facing the viewer and at
times with backs turned,
respond by turning to face
the camera when the artist
calls their names, recalling
the memory of her deceased
father.
Deductive Object:
Unfolding Bottari
(1991-2014) includes 223
images taken by the artist
at flea markets around the
world. Accumulated, the
vulnerability of objects in
a moment of transition
questions the destination of
human desire and that of
possession.
All of Kimsooja's
investigations are
contextualized from the
processes of mundane daily
acts such as sewing,
weaving, wrapping and
unfolding that begin with
her gaze as a painter and
expands towards all possible
directionalities.
The multiple directionality
of the artist's gaze
actively draws the delicate
thread that she follows so
compellingly in the Thread
Routes series. In
this series, the films
function as a structural
investigation into the
similarities in performative
elements of textile
construction and their
relationship to nature,
architecture, agriculture
and gender relationships
across cultures and
geographic zones.
For the first time in
Europe, Kimsooja will
present Thread Routes –
Chapter II (2011)
which is the second in the
six part series of films
shot on 16mm. Filmed in
various European cities, the
film depicts a wide variety
of lace making techniques,
woven together with images
of delicate yet grand
European structures such as
the Duomo in Milan, the
Eiffel Tower in Paris,
Sedlec Ossuary in Kutna Hora
and La Alhambra in Granada.
The bold, masculine and
power-oriented monumental
architectural forms and
structures are juxtaposed
with the delicate, feminine
and ephemeral lace making
alongside the structure of
local flowers and
vegetation.
Since the late 70s, Kimsooja
has transformed and
redefined the notion of
painting into
object/sculptural pieces,
performance, video, and
site-specific sound and
light installations. Her
innovation has been to
question the
surface/tableau, self and
the other; dealing with
existential, natural,
cultural and political
borders from the concept of
obangsaek and its
dimensionality with relation
to the artist's body in the
world; contextualizing her
own concepts in parallel to
Western art history.
Galerie
Tschudi
Chesa Madalena | Somvih 115 |
7524 Zuoz | Switzerland
Tel. +41 81 850 13 90 |
www.galerie-tschudi.ch
________________________________________________________________________________
Kimsooja, 'Deductive Object', 2006-2013, set of two digital flex prints, 40 x 29.4", Courtesy La Fabrica, Madrid, and Kimsooja Studio
KIMSOOJA
- Bottaris
La Fabrica, Madrid, Spain
February 4 – April 6, 2014
Kimsooja will present
'Encounter – Looking into
Sewing' (1998-2013),
'Deductive Object'
(1996-2013), 'To Breathe:
Invisible Needle/Invisible
Mirror' (2007), and 'The Sun
Unfolded' (2008)
In 'Kimsooja - Bottaris',
the artist presents four
bodies of work, each of
which approach the concept
of bottari and its
relationship both to
Obangsaek color field and to
the tension surrounding the
performative figure.
Signifying four cardinal
points and the center, the
theory of the Korean color
field known as Obangsaek,
draws from the relationships
of Yin and Yang, Shamanism
and Taoism. In this group of
works, Obangsaek is unfolded
in relation to the dynamic
presence/absence of the
performing body.
From the hidden bodies of
the 'Encounter - Looking
into Sewing' and 'Deductive
Object' photographs, to the
implied body of
architectural space in 'To
Breathe: Invisible
Needle/Invisible Mirror' and
the celestial body of 'The
Sun Unfolded', the works in
Kimsooja - Bottaris explore
the movement from surface to
spirit across three distinct
but related physical realms.
Galarie
La Fabrica
________________________________________________________________________________
Kimsooja, 'Thread Routes – Chapter 1', 2010, still from 16mm film transferred to HD format, 26.51 min, sound, Courtesy of Kukje Gallery, Seoul and Kimsooja Studio
The
International Biennial
of Contemporary Art of
Cartagena de Indias
Museo Naval, Columbia
Curated by Berta Sichel
February 7 – April 7, 2014
Kimsooja will present
'Thread Routes - Chapter I'.
The Biennial is created with
the idea of further
enhancing Cartagena as a
center for the arts by
incorporating the visual
arts along with the existing
presence of music,
literature, and film, and
other
cultural manifestations
already emblematic to the
city, for the cultural
enrichment of the community.
BIACI
________________________________________________________________________________
Kimsooja, Thread Routes – Chapter 1, 2010, still from 16mm film transferred to HD format, 26.51 min, sound, Courtesy of Kimsooja Studio
Special Project: Kimsooja 'Thread Routes - Chapter I
.
September 18 - October 2, 2014
Wednesday - Sunday
in The Lab, The Drawing Center
Korean artist Kimsooja premieres the first in a series of six 16mm films that document the performative elements of varied forms of indigenous textile construction. Thread Routes - Chapter I, 2010 explores the Peruvian weaving culture set amid the highlands of Machu Picchu.
Main Exhibition dates:
September 19 - December 14th, 2014
New York – The Drawing Center presents Thread Lines, September 19–December 14, 2014, a group exhibition that disabuses the tradition of drawing as simply putting pen to paper, framing it instead as an open-ended act in which lines can be woven, stitched, even embodied. Spanning the period from the mid-1960s to the present, Thread Lines features sixteen artists who engage sewing, stitching, and weaving to create works that activate the expressive and conceptual potential of line and illuminate affinities between the mediums of textile and drawing. For some artists, line functions as a direct extension of the body—a performative act or participatory event. Others work in abstraction; and still others use line as a means of addressing personal narrative, gender identity, and politics. Multi-generational in scope, Thread Lines brings together those pioneers who first unraveled the distinction between textile and art with a new wave of practitioners who have inherited and expanded upon their groundbreaking gestures. Curated by Joanna Kleinberg Romanow, Assistant Curator.
Participating Artists: Mónica Bengoa (b. 1969, Santiago, Chile), Louise Bourgeois (b. 1911, Paris, France–d. 2010, New York, NY), Sheila Hicks (b. 1934, Hastings, NE), Ellen Lesperance (b. 1971, Minneapolis, MN), Kimsooja (b. 1957, Taegu, Korea), Beryl Korot (b. 1945, New York, NY), Maria Lai (b. 1919, Ulassai, Sardinia–d. 2013, Cardedu, Sardinia), Sam Moyer (b. 1983, Chicago, IL), William J. O'Brien (b. 1975, Eastlake, OH), Robert Otto Epstein (b. 1979, Pittsburgh, PA), Jessica Rankin (b. 1971, Sydney, Australia), Elaine Reichek (b. 1943, New York, NY), Drew Shiflett (b. 1951, Chicago, IL), Alan Shields (b. 1944, Herington, KS–d. 2005, Shelter Island, NY), Lenore Tawney (b. 1907, Lorain, OH–d. 2007, New York, NY), and Anne Wilson (b. 1949, Detroit, MI).
________________________________________________________________________________
PUBLIC PROGRAM
Thursday, September 25 at 6:30pm
An evening walkthrough of Thread Lines with Curator, Joanna Kleinberg Romanow and participating artists Robert Otto Epstein, Sam Moyer, Jessica Rankin, Elaine Reicheck, and Drew Shiflett.
PUBLICATION
To accompany Thread Lines The Drawing Center will produce an edition in the Drawing Papers series, featuring color illustrations of the artworks and an essay by the exhibition's curator.
View Catalogue here
Purchase Catalogue here
LIMTED EDITION PRINT
In honor of the exhibition, New York-based artist Jessica Rankin has created a limited edition print, fabricated by Richloom Fabrics Group and Solo Impression. The print is an edition of five and will retail for $1,500. All proceeds will benefit The Drawing Center.
CREDITS
Thread Lines is made possible by the support of Richloom Fabrics Group, Fiona and Eric Rudin, Daniel Romanow, The Capital Group, the Lenore G. Tawney Foundation, Ambach & Rice, Galería Isabel Aninat, and Lesley Heller.
.
.
ABOUT THE DRAWING
CENTER
The Drawing Center is
the only
not-for-profit fine
arts institution in
the country to focus
solely on the
exhibition of
drawings, both
historical and
contemporary. It was
established in 1977 to
provide opportunities
for emerging and
under-recognized
artists; to
demonstrate the
significance and
diversity of drawings
throughout history;
and to stimulate
public dialogue on
issues of art and
culture.
LOCATION, HOURS &
ACCESSIBILITY
35 Wooster Street
between Broome and
Grand Streets in SoHo,
New York. Gallery
hours are
Wednesday-Sunday
12pm–6pm, Thursday,
12pm–8pm. Tickets: $5
Adults, $3 Students
and seniors, Children
under 12 are free, and
free admission
Thursdays 6-8pm.
The Drawing Center is
wheelchair accessible.
________________________________________________________________________________
A Needle Woman: Galaxy was a Memory, Earth is a Souvenir
A Needle Woman: Galaxy was a Memory, Earth is a Souvenir
2014, 46 x 4.5 ft (diameter)
Steel, custom acrylic panel, laminated polymer film, circular mirror
Intimate Cosmologies: The Aesthetics of Scale in an Age of Nanotechnology
Arts Quad, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
Curated by Stephanie Owens (Visiting Assistant Professor, Studio Art; Director, Cornell Council for the Art)
September 15 – December 22, 2014
Daylight hours until dusk; Appointment necessary for view inside. Contact cca@cornell.edu for viewing times.
Artist Talk: The Dimensions of a Needle
Thursday September 18 (5.30pm – 7pm)
For reservations click here
Opening Reception: Friday September 19 (5pm - 7pm)
Panel Discussion: Friday September 19 (10:30am)
Kimsooja in conversation with Professor Ulrich Wiesner of Cornell's Department of Material Science and Engineering, curator Stephanie Owens, and architect Jaeho Chong.
click here for more images
As part of the 2014 CCA biennale Intimate Cosmologies: The Aesthetics of Scale in an Age of Nanotechnology, Korean-born conceptual multi media artist, Kimsooja has been commissioned to create a new work in collaboration with the Wiesner Nanomaterials Lab at Cornell University.
Inspired by the perspectival direction of nanotechnology and French philosopher Henri Bergson's thoughts on memory as related to metaphysical perception, Kimsooja explores the notion of the needlepoint as an intersection between distance and memory threading across a cosmic scale.
'A Needle Woman: Galaxy was a Memory, Earth is a Souvenir' is a 46 feet high, 4.5 feet diameter needle-shaped steel structure made for an intimate exterior and interior experience. The structure's grid-like, sleek, volumetric spine is fleshed out with acrylic panels to form a crystalline, transparent pavilion when seen directly. At a raking light, each of the panels, which have been individually treated with an iridescent nanopolymer, transforms the transparent pavilion into a radiant spectrum with color as the polymer refracts various wavelengths of natural light dependent on the angle from which it is viewed.
Created in close collaboration between Kimsooja, architect Jaeho Chong, and Cornell nanomaterial engineer and chemical scientist Ulrich Wiesner, the pavilion is treated with a molecularly engineered nano polymer that is precisely structured to maximize the refractive qualities of natural light. Similar to iridescence that occurs in nature on the wings of butterflies or shell of beetles, the color of the pavilion is physically interactive, where the blue, red, orange, pink, yellow, green, violet and other spectral colors appear as a radiant glitch in the fabric of reality. The interior floor of the structure is mirrored, doubling its scale and light effects so that it appears to extend simultaneously into earth and sky with the viewer caught somewhere at the threshold between the two realms. While the announcement of earth as a 'souvenir' in the title suggests an object or gift, the idea of Earth as a readymade or readyused object functions as an aperture through which to view Kimsooja's artistic evolution. Expanding from the notion of needle as form and concept, this project addresses the needlepoint as both a void and a point of departure in time and space on an architectural scale.
By presenting a morphological form that assimilates the perspective of scale at the heart of nanoscientific practice as well as perspective in art and the universe, the artist aims to explore the possible shapes and points of view that reveal the invisible as visible, physical as immaterial, and vice versa. 'A Needle Woman: Galaxy was a Memory, Earth is a Souvenir' is a continuation of Kimsooja's decades long exploration of the concept of the needle and the notion of bottari, both of which have been explored in a number of site-specific projects, most recently in the Korean Pavilion in the Biennale di Venezia, 2013.
Collaborators: Jaeho Chong (Architect); Professor Ulrich Wiesner (Materials Science & Engineering); and Wiesner Group researchers: Hiroaki Sai, PhD (Materials Science & Engineering); and Ferdinand Kohle (graduate student, Chemistry and Chemical Biology); Professor Erik P. Eshelman (Architectural Engineering)
________________________________________________________________________________
Intimate Cosmologies: The Aesthetics of Scale in an Age of Nanotechnology
Arts Quad, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
Curated by Stephanie Owens (Professor of multi disciplinary studies, art & architecture)
September 15 – December 22, 2014
Daylight hours until dusk; Appointment necessary for view inside.
Contact cca@cornell.edu for viewing times.
Kimsooja will present 'A Needle Woman: Galaxy was a Memory, Earth is a Souvenir' (2014)
As part of the 2014 CCA biennale Intimate Cosmologies: The Aesthetics of Scale in an Age of Nanotechnology, Korean-born conceptual multi media artist, Kimsooja has been commissioned to create a new work in collaboration with the Nanoscience lab at Cornell University.
'A Needle Woman: Galaxy was a Memory, Earth is a Souvenir' is a 46 feet high, 4.5 feet diameter needle-shaped steel structure made for an intimate exterior and interior experience. The structure's grid-like, sleek, volumetric spine is fleshed out with acrylic panels to form a crystalline, transparent pavilion when seen directly. At a raking light, each of the panels, which have been individually treated with an iridescent nanopolymer, transforms the transparent pavilion into a radiant spectrum with color as the polymer refracts various wavelengths of natural light dependent on the angle from which it is viewed.
Artist Talk: The Dimensions of a Needle
Thursday September 18 (5.30pm – 7pm)
For reservations click here
Opening Reception: Friday September 19 (6pm - 8pm)
Panel Discussion: Friday September 19 (11am)
Kimsooja in conversation with Professor Ulrich Wiesner of Cornell's Department of Material Science and Engineering, curator Stephanie Owens, and architect Jaeho Chong
Collaborators: Jaeho Chong (Architect); Professor Ulrich Wiesner (Materials Science & Engineering); and Wiesner Group researchers: Hiroaki Sai, PhD (Materials Science & Engineering); and Ferdinand Kohle (graduate student, Chemistry and Chemical Biology); Professor Erik P. Eshelman (Architectural Engineering)
CCA Biennale
The 55th Biennale di Venezia, photography by Jaeho Chong, courtesy of Arts Council Korea, Kukje Gallery,
Seoul, Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan, and Kimsooja Studio
Kimsooja, To Breathe
Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan, Italy
September 24 – November 13, 2014
Kimsooja will present works from the 'To Breathe' lightbox series (2013) alongside the photographic series 'The Sun - Unfolded' (2008).
The 'To Breathe' lightbox series (2013) are based on images created during the 55th Biennale di Venezia, where Kimsooja represented Korea with a site-specific project entitled 'To Breathe: Bottari'. Approaching the architecture of the Korean Pavilion as a bottari, the artist wrapped the division between nature and the interior space with a translucent diffraction grating film, accompanied by an anechoic dark room that completely transformed the space into an experiential and transcendental environment in which the audience was invited to be the live and active performers.
Presented alongside the lightboxes, 'The Sun - Unfolded', which was created in Goa, India in 2008, is a series of large scale photographs depicting circles of spectral color taking shape in concentric waves around the sun.
Together these two distinct bodies of work explore the natural phenomenon of light and darkness that evoke distinct visual extremes which are connected as part of a whole. Rendered as lightboxes, the 'To Breathe' works further investigate the architecture of color through surface, reflection and abstraction, while 'The Sun - Unfolded' explores form and color reminiscent of a mandala or the sun as a breathing body.
Galleria Raffaella Cortese
Kimsooja
An Album: Borderlines
2013
LED video projection in HD format
11:02 loop
Silent
Commissioned through the Art in Architecture Program of the U.S. General Services Administration in 2010, Kimsooja has created a poignant site-specific artwork for the Mariposa Land Port of Entry.
One of the busiest land ports in the United States, Mariposa serves as the main port of entry for fresh produce entering the United States from Mexico and facilitates over 23 million visitor border crossings every year.
On this border, Kimsooja has installed a large LED screen directly on the borderline, above the revolving door at the first pedestrian entry to US territory. Both marking the site and emphasizing the concept of borderlines, the screen plays a new video work created especially for this specific location and community.
Filmed in Nogales in 2013, An Album: Borderlines consists of silent video portraits of community members who live with the daily reality of the borderline, commuting between both countries. The portraits show each individual in three different positions: facing the viewer, facing away, and turning back towards the viewer. These three distinctive postures represent the individuals' journeys through their past, present and future. The figures facing the camera suggest arrival/encounter, whereas those same figures facing away from the camera evoke departure/separation. The artist provoked the action of turning back towards the viewer by calling the name of each individual during filming, offering the opportunity to re-enter the memory of a reality left behind. Throughout all of the portraits, the subtle changes in facial expressions suggest interior, psychological journeys.
Kimsooja conceived of this video as a group portrait of the current social and cultural landscapes of the United States—a country of immigrants, while addressing the sensitive and harsh reality of the borderline between the US and Mexico. As the artwork's title suggests, this video album of portraits addresses many different types of borderlines: physical, psychological, geographical, political, and cultural.
In a poetic reflection on the concept of the work, the screen itself performed the gesture of the individuals it depicts and asks the viewers who pass beneath it to do the same. In order to observe the rhythmically changing video portraits, visitors passing across the border from Mexico to the US will mimic the gestures of the figures on the screen by turning back to look over their shoulder, perhaps prompting them to reflect on their own personal, interior journeys. By presenting real portraits of the people of Nogales, Kimsooja's artwork bears witness and embraces the many hopes, joys, desires, memories, challenges and destinies that constitute a vibrant immigrant society.
Commissioned through the Art in Architecture Program
Fine Arts Collection
U.S. General Services Administration
2010 – 2013
GSA
Inhabiting the World - Busan Biennale
Busan Museum of Modern Art, Busan, Korea
Curated by Olivier Kaeppelin
September 20 – November 22, 2014
Kimsooja will present 'To Breathe: Mandala' (2010) mixed media sound installation
The
main
exhibition, curated
by Olivier
Kaeppelin, and
titled Inhabiting
the World,
will be opened
at the Busan
Museum of Art.
Kaeppelin
claims that
artists may
have more
efficient,
sustainable
analysis and
alterations
for various
social issues
and
transformations
than experts
of a certain
field or
academics
would do. In
this light, as
he adds,
Inhabiting the
World implies
active
attitudes and
liveliness
towards the
world as well
as willingness
to respond to
the world as
well as change
it, which
resemble the
characteristics
of the city of
Busan. By
exhibiting art
pieces that
could
constitute
evidences of
the
contemporaneity
and implement
the future,
Kaeppelin
would like to
represent the
consciousness
that still
remains in
contemporary
art and
artists during
the most
incongruent,
incoherent
time of the
most
materialist
society.
Voyage
to Biennale -
50 years of
Contemporary
Korean Art in
Overseas
Biennales
Busan Museum
of Modern Art,
Busan, Korea
Curated by Lee
Kensu
September 20 –
November 22,
2014
Kimsooja
will present
an image
slideshow of
her
participation
in 40
biennales all
over the world
throughout the
course of her
career.
The "Biennale
Archive" exhibition,
titled Voyage
to Biennale -
50 years of
Contemporary
Korean Art in
Overseas
Biennales—will
be curated by
Lee Kenshu
(the previous
editor in
chief of
Monthly Art).
Bringing
together
leading Korean
artists’
works,
Biennale
Archive will
exhibit
artworks that
may represent
the new
contemporary.
This archive
exhibition
will survey
the biennale
history from
Biennale de
Paris and
exhibit the
related
references
chronologically,
which will
become a great
opportunity to
see the modern
history of
Korean art
becoming
radically
international.
Busan
Biennale
Thread Lines
The Drawing Center, New York, USA
Curated by Joanna Kleinberg Romanow
September 18 - October 2, 2014
Kimsooja will present 'Thread Routes - Chapter 1' (2010) video projection
This group exhibition disabuses the idea that drawing is simply putting pen to paper, framing it instead as an open-ended act in which lines can be woven, stitched, knit, even embodied. Featuring sixteen contemporary artists who use textile in a variety of formats (embroidery, weaving, collage, and performance), the exhibition highlights the expressive and conceptual possibilities of line, with an emphasis on its making. The works selected invoke many characteristics long associated with the drawn medium; however, the application of textile brings forth a new hybridity in which the objects created, using the techniques and materials drawn from craft, result in lines detached from the picture plane, lines read on an unprecedentedly large scale, and lines that extend into real space—a collective, social space. For some artists, the line functions as a direct extension of the body—a performative act or participatory event. Others work in abstraction; still others use the line as a means of addressing gender, personal narrative, and politics. While this exhibition is necessarily limited in scope, it reflects a widespread tendency that has developed over decades and continues to propel the drawn medium forward.
The Drawing Center
Experiments with Truth: Gandhi and Images of Nonviolence
The Menil Collection, Houston, USA
Curated by Josef Helfenstein
October 3 - January 11, 2015
Kimsooja will present 'A Needle Woman' (2005) video projection
Experiments with Truth: Gandhi and Images of Nonviolence is the first international project to explore the resonance of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s (1867-1948) ethics of non-violence, or “satyagraha”, in the visual arts. This exhibition presents approximately 130 works spanning several centuries and includes paintings, drawings, photographs, prints, sculptures, rare books, and films by artists from Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe. The exhibition’s themes echo the expansive humanitarian concerns of the Menil Collection’s founders, John and Dominique de Menil. Following their example, we aim to create a platform for international conversation on world-wide issues surrounding human rights, compassion, civil disobedience, and progress through non-violence.
The Menil Collection
The Eye of the Needle
KODE - Art Museums of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
Curated by Marie von Möller
October 10 - January 25, 2015
Kimsooja will present 'A Needle Woman' (2009) video projection
In recent years there has been an increased interest in handcraft techniques and materials in contemporary art, among them embroidery. This exhibition is a collaborative project between KODE and the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design. Both museums have fetched embroidery gems from their collections that illustrate the unique qualities of embroidery.
KODE
Le Mouvement - The City Performed
Kunsthaus CentrePasquArt, Biel, Switzerland
Curated by Chris Sharp and Gianni Jetzer
August 31 - November 2, 2014
Kimsooja will present 'A Needle Woman' (2009) video projection
The exhibition The City Performed at Kunsthaus CentrePasquArt extends the concept of performance in public space in both historical-geographical and political terms. It explicitly incorporates artists who have implemented street performances under various circumstances—in some cases at the risk of being arrested and imprisoned. The museum-based exploration offers a more in-depth examination of the context of performance and dance, in which the definition and interpretation of public space differs with each work shown. Considering differences and distinctions is the only way to tackle the complexity of the system of discourse, society, city and public space.
CenterPasquArt
Paris Intérieur-Extérieur, le Paris des photographes 1984 – 2014
Galerie des Bibliothèques de Paris, Paris, France
Curated by Claire Berger-Vachon & Anne Cartier-Bresson
September 26, 2014 - January 4, 2015
Kimsooja will present 'A Needle Woman' (2009) video projection
Paris Bibliotheques
Current Exhibitions
Beyond and Between
LEEUM, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
Curated by Hyesoo WOO
August 28 – December 12, 2014
Kimsooja will
present 'Aire
de Tierra /
Air of Earth'
(2009) video
projection
This year, Leeum
Samsung Museum
of Art
celebrates the
tenth
anniversary of
its
foundation. Curated
around the
theme, Beyond
and Between,
this exhibition
presents a wide
selection of
works from the
museum’s
collection,
spanning the
prehistoric to
the Joseon
period in terms
of traditional
Korean art,
modern and
contemporary
Korean art from
the beginning of
Western
influence to
pre- and postwar
periods, and
global
contemporary
art.
'Air of Earth'
is one of eight
videos that
compose 'Earth,
Water, Fire, and
Air', a
multi-channel
video project by
artist Kimsooja.
This work
contains footage
of an active
volcano located
in Guatemala and
of the immediate
transformation
of lava into
volcanic stone
and ash.
Captured in this
work is
Kimsooja’s
intention to
visualize the
earth through
the
relationships
between the
elements of
fire, water, and
air, as they
circulate and
connect. In
observing the
creation of
volcanic stone
and ash in the
midst of the
spewing hot air,
viewers realize
the principle in
nature that
undergoes
creation,
change, and
extinction and
the similarities
between nature
and human life.
LEEUM,
Samsung Museum
of Art
2014
Daegu
Contemporary
Art Festival
in Gangjeong
The ARC,
Gangjeong,
South Korea
Curated by
Okreal Kim
August 23 –
September 28,
2014
Kimsooja will
present 'Tierra
de Agua /
Earth of Water'
(2009)
site-specific
video
projection
2014 Daegu Contemporary Art Festival in Gangjeong is to make people remember the historical meaning of the art festival held in Gangjeong in the 1970’s and realize the need to make art stronger and more creative through the futuristic vision. In this aspect, Gangjeong can be an aesthetic field where the role of art is extended and connected to our lives by provoking and sharing thoughts of art in the past, present and the future.
2014 Daegu Contemporary Art Festival in Gangjeong
LANDSEASKY: Revisiting Spatiality in Video
National Art School Gallery, Sydney, Australia
Curated by Kim Machan
August 21 – October 11, 2014
Kimsooja will
present 'Bottari
- Alfa Beach'
(2001) video
projection
LANDSEASKY sets
out to
challenge the
illusionist
elements that
we readily
consume in
screen
culture. The
artists have
been selected
as their work
sharpens our
focus on the
medium of
video,
inevitably
comparing and
contrasting
the strategies
each artist
uses to
articulate
their
concepts. The
works have a
very strong
physical and
visual impact.
However, the
exhibition
extends the
investigation
of video space
to include
other subtle
approaches
that will add
and amplify
the discussion
of spatiality
in video. For
instance, some
of the
proposed works
update the
connection
between
history and
society with a
fresh
perspective
National
Art School
Gallery
The Disappearance of Fireflies (La Disparition Des Lucioles)
Prison Sainte-Anne, Avignon, France
Curated by Éric Mézil
May 18 – November 25, 2014
Kimsooja will
present 'Bottari
- Alfa Beach'
(2001) video
projection, 'Bottari'
(2004) 4
Bottari
installation
The Collection
Lambert will
occupy the
cells,
corridors and
certain
courtyards of
the prison, to
exhibit works
from the
prestigious
private
collection of
Enea Righi.
The title is
borrowed from
the famous
text published
by Pasolini in
1975 in the
Corriere,
which will
impregnate
visitors'
entire
collection
tour; indeed,
this
exhibition is
meant to be a
sensorial
experience in
which the
memory-steeped
locations and
their hosted
artworks will
come together
and interact
in the manner
of the Italian
director's
beloved
fireflies. The
theme of
"imprisonment"
will naturally
be evoked, as
well as "the
passage of
time",
"solitude" and
"love".
Collection
Lambert
Total
Art:
Contemporary
Video
National
Museum of
Women in the
Arts,
Washington
D.C, USA
Curated by
Kathryn Wat
June 6 –
October 12,
2014
Kimsooja will
present 'Thread
Routes -
Chapter 1'
(2010)
video
projection
NMWA
________________________________________________________________________________
An Album: Borderlines
Kimsooja
An Album: Borderlines
2013
LED video projection in HD format
11:02 loop
Silent
Commissioned through the Art in Architecture Program of the U.S. General Services Administration in 2010, Kimsooja has created a poignant site-specific artwork for the Mariposa Land Port of Entry.
One of the busiest land ports in the United States, Mariposa serves as the main port of entry for fresh produce entering the United States from Mexico and facilitates over 23 million visitor border crossings every year.
On this border, Kimsooja has installed a large LED screen directly on the borderline, above the revolving door at the first pedestrian entry to US territory. Both marking the site and emphasizing the concept of borderlines, the screen plays a new video work created especially for this specific location and community.
Filmed in Nogales in 2013, An Album: Borderlines consists of silent video portraits of community members who live with the daily reality of the borderline, commuting between both countries. The portraits show each individual in three different positions: facing the viewer, facing away, and turning back towards the viewer. These three distinctive postures represent the individuals' journeys through their past, present and future. The figures facing the camera suggest arrival/encounter, whereas those same figures facing away from the camera evoke departure/separation. The artist provoked the action of turning back towards the viewer by calling the name of each individual during filming, offering the opportunity to re-enter the memory of a reality left behind. Throughout all of the portraits, the subtle changes in facial expressions suggest interior, psychological journeys.
Kimsooja conceived of this video as a group portrait of the current social and cultural landscapes of the United States—a country of immigrants, while addressing the sensitive and harsh reality of the borderline between the US and Mexico. As the artwork's title suggests, this video album of portraits addresses many different types of borderlines: physical, psychological, geographical, political, and cultural.
In a poetic reflection on the concept of the work, the screen itself performed the gesture of the individuals it depicts and asks the viewers who pass beneath it to do the same. In order to observe the rhythmically changing video portraits, visitors passing across the border from Mexico to the US will mimic the gestures of the figures on the screen by turning back to look over their shoulder, perhaps prompting them to reflect on their own personal, interior journeys. By presenting real portraits of the people of Nogales, Kimsooja's artwork bears witness and embraces the many hopes, joys, desires, memories, challenges and destinies that constitute a vibrant immigrant society.
Commissioned through the Art in Architecture Program
Fine Arts Collection
U.S. General Services Administration
2010 – 2013
GSA
________________________________________________________________________________
To Breathe: Mandala
Galería Kewenig
Palma de Mallorca, Spain
June 5 – August 2, 2014
To Breathe: Mandala
2014
Mandala is a Sanskrit word that means "circle". The basic form of most Hindu and Buddhist mandalas is a square with four gates containing a circle with a center point. Each gate is in the shape of a T. In various spiritual traditions, mandalas may be employed for focusing attention of aspirants and adepts, as a spiritual teaching tool, for establishing a sacred space, and as an aid to meditation and trance induction. According to David Fontana, its symbolic nature can help one "to access progressively deeper levels of the unconscious, ultimately assisting the meditator to experience a mystical sense of oneness with the ultimate unity from which the cosmos in all its manifold forms arises." The psychoanalyst Carl Jung saw the mandala as "a representation of the unconscious self," and believed his paintings of mandalas enabled him to identify emotional disorders and work towards wholeness in personality. In common use, mandala has become a generic term for any plan, chart or geometric pattern that represents the cosmos metaphysically or symbolically, a microcosm of the Universe from the human perspective.
To Breathe: Mandala (2010) is an installation that is represented by a ready-made American jukebox speaker, which has the structure of a Mandala. The speaker has an array of vivid colors with a rotating central section covered in mirrors. Playing on the speaker is a breathing sound performance of the artist's amplified inhaling, exhaling and humming (The Weaving Factory, 2004).
Enveloped within a painted yellow square, the spinning central mirror of the jukebox reflects light throughout the Oratorio de Sant Feliu—the 13th century single nave chapel in which it is installed. In Obangsaek—the Korean color field that represents the nature of the universe—yellow is situated at the center of the four cardinal points and signifies 'universe', 'earth', 'power' and 'dignity'. Together with the artist's breathing sounds, which recall both the individual and universal body, the speaker becomes a unifying axis, a mandala. Kimsooja leads us to a hypnotic and meditative outer space of timelessness, enhancing the sense of belonging to a universal, spiritual world, which inspires us to look within and reflect on our being in the world, embracing current political and religious conflicts. Although her work is devoid of direct political connotations, Kimsooja poses these questions to challenge us, and invites the audience to locate themselves within all the different spiritual zones that co-exist in a single space, which can provide the keys for understanding the world in which we live.
Bottari – An Island
2014
During a residency at MOMA PS1 in New York in 1992, Kimsooja discovered bottari as a form of tableau, sculpture, ready-used object and concept.
In early iterations of bottari, the artist used fragments of colorful Korean fabrics as a way to create a "pigment", which related more directly to the formal qualities of bottari. Over time, this practice evolved beyond its aesthetic qualities as the artist began to construct bottari from used clothing and objects in order to emphasize elements of reality and a more specific social, cultural and bodily presence.
After leaving New York in 1993, the artist created a bottari by wrapping a telephone book from the city that year. Soon after, following the death of a supportive collector, Rolf Hoffmann, Kimsooja worked with his widow, Erica Hoffmann to collect some of his favorite personal items. Both of the women wrapped these items together to create a bottari as memorial to him.
As an action of performance—of wrapping bodies and memories, bottari became, rather than a formal sculpture; a memorial—a space indicative of loss, migration and hope. This wrapping of memory soon expanded to incorporate the anonymous victims of disaster and loss. In Bottari: The Island (2011) Kimsooja filled eight bottaris with used clothing donated from Japan which were then installed for the exhibition, TRA – Edge of Becoming (Palazzo Fortuni, Venice, 2011) in commemoration of the devastating tsunami in 2011.
Since the Deductive Object series of the early 90s, Kimsooja has been incorporating used objects into her bottaris as well as photographing flea market objects as an 'unfolded Bottari' series. The artist continues this exploration of the expressive power of ordinary used objects in these new works. For Bottari - An Island, the artist has collected different symbolic objects from the island of Mallorca, further expanding her decades long exploration of bottari as concept, bottari as memory and bottari as a body and an island.
Accompanying these works are photographs of prior bottari installations and the performative sculpture Encounter – Looking into Sewing (1998-2011) in which an apparently faceless figure is swathed in layers of colorful Korean fabrics. Speaking to us of privacy, intimacy, sex and dreams, the figure reveals itself as both unique and unknowable beneath numerous layers of formalistic and social conventions.
After two solo shows in the recently closed Cologne Gallery in 2005 and 2007, KEWENIG is showing Kimsooja's work for the first time in Palma de Mallorca.
Galería Kewenig
________________________________________________________________________________
True Colors - Yebisu International Festival for Art and Alternative Visions
Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo
Curated by Hiromi Kitazawa
February 7 - February 23, 2014
Kimsooja will present 'Cities on the Move - 2727km Bottari truck', 'Bottari', and 'A Needle Woman'- a special selection of the cities chosen by the artist for Yebisu International Festival 2013
Yebisu Festival
________________________________________________________________________________
Land
- Sea - Sky
Art Sonje, Seoul, Korea
Curated by Kim Machan
February 22 - February
23, 2014
Kimsooja will present
'Bottari: Alfa' Beach
This group of
challenging video
installations includes
works by fifteen
international artists
and
scheduled to be
presented in Korea,
China and Australia. The
first exhibition of
LANDSEASKY occurs
across an array of
venues in Seoul, South
Korea in partnership
with Artsonje Center,
Lee Hwaik
Gallery, One & J
Gallery, Opsis Art,
Gallery IHN, and Gallery
Skape.
MAAP
________________________________________________________________________________
Matrix
- Textiles in Art
and the Applied
Arts from Gustav
Klimt to Chiharu
Shiota
Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg,
Wolfsburg, Germany
Curated by Prof. Dr.
Markus Brüderlin
October 12, 2013 - March
2, 2014
Kimsooja will present
'Thread Routes - Chapter
I'.
An exploration of the
significance of textile,
involving a re-reading
of the history of modern
art from Art Nouveau to
the present. This
large-scale exhibition
of approximately 200
works by 140 artists,
among them major
paintings by Gustav
Klimt, Vincent van Gogh,
Edgar Degas, Henri
Matisse, Paul Klee and
Jackson Pollock.
Kunstmuseum
Wolfsburg
________________________________________________________________________________
Upcoming Solo Exhibition
KIMSOOJA - Bottaris
La Fabrica, Madrid, Spain
February 4 – April 6, 2014
Kimsooja will present 'Encounter – Looking into Sewing' (1998-2013), 'Deductive Object' (1996-2013), 'To Breathe: Invisible Needle/Invisible Mirror' (2007), and 'The Sun Unfolded' (2008)
In 'Kimsooja - Bottaris', the artist presents four bodies of work, each of which approach the concept of bottari and its relationship both to Obangsaek color field and to the tension surrounding the performative figure. Signifying four cardinal points and the center, the theory of the Korean color field known as Obangsaek, draws from the relationships of Yin and Yang, Shamanism and Taoism. In this group of works, Obangsaek is unfolded in relation to the dynamic presence/absence of the performing body.
From the hidden bodies of the 'Encounter - Looking into Sewing' and 'Deductive Object' photographs, to the implied body of architectural space in 'To Breathe: Invisible Needle/Invisible Mirror' and the celestial body of 'The Sun Unfolded', the works in Kimsooja - Bottaris explore the movement from surface to spirit across three distinct but related physical realms.
Galarie La Fabrica
Upcoming Group Exhibitions
The International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Cartagena de Indias
Museo Naval, Columbia
Curated by Berta Sichel
February 7 – April 7, 2014
Kimsooja will
present
'Thread Routes
- Chapter I'.
The Biennial
is created
with the idea
of further
enhancing
Cartagena as a
center for the
arts by
incorporating
the visual
arts along
with the
existing
presence of
music,
literature,
and film, and
other
cultural
manifestations
already
emblematic to
the city, for
the cultural
enrichment of
the community.
BIACI
True Colors - Yebisu International Festival for Art and Alternative Visions
Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo
Curated by Hiromi Kitazawa
February 7 - February 23, 2014
Kimsooja will present 'Cities on the Move - 2727km Bottari truck', 'Bottari', and 'A Needle Woman'- a special selection of the cities chosen by the artist for Yebisu International Festival 2013
Yebisu Festival/
Land - Sea - Sky
Art Sonje, Seoul, Korea
Curated by Kim Machan
February 22 - February 23, 2014
Kimsooja will present 'Bottari: Alfa' Beach
This group of challenging video installations includes works by fifteen international artists and
scheduled to be presented in Korea, China and Australia. The first exhibition of LANDSEASKY occurs
across an array of venues in Seoul, South Korea in partnership with Artsonje Center, Lee Hwaik
Gallery, One & J Gallery, Opsis Art, Gallery IHN, and Gallery Skape.
MAAP
Current Group Exhibition
Matrix - Textiles in Art and the Applied Arts from Gustav Klimt to Chiharu Shiota
Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg, Germany
Curated by Prof. Dr. Markus Brüderlin
October 12, 2013 - March 2, 2014
Kimsooja will
present 'Thread
Routes - Chapter
I'.
An exploration of
the significance
of textile,
involving a
re-reading of the
history of modern
art from Art
Nouveau to the
present. This
large-scale
exhibition of
approximately 200
works by 140
artists, among
them major
paintings by
Gustav Klimt,
Vincent van Gogh,
Edgar Degas, Henri
Matisse, Paul Klee
and Jackson
Pollock.
Kunstmuseum
Wolfsburg
Upcoming Solo Exhibition
mannequin, 165 x 80(diam.) cm, Unique piece, photo by Simon Vogel, Courtesy of Kewenig Galerie &
Kimsooja Studio
.
KIMSOOJA Unfolding
Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada
Curated by Daina Augaitis
October 11, 2013 – January 26, 2014
|
KIMSOOJA
Unfolding is the
first
retrospective
exhibition to
assess the thirty-
year career of the
Korean-born,
Paris- and New
York based artist,
and offers an
unprecedented
opportunity to
trace the
development of the
artist's practice
from her earlier
works to her more
recent production.
While the scale
and media of her
art has varied
widely, what
remains constant
is an engagement
with questions of
identity in the
face of change and
social flux. The
exhibition
highlights works
that address
notions of time,
memory and
displacement, and
the relationship
between the human
body and the
material world.
This broad survey
includes early
textile-based
pieces from the
1980s, Deductive
Objects, large
site-specific
installations such
as Bottari
Truck, as
well as single and
multi-channel
videos.
North American
audiences were
introduced to
Kimsooja's work in
the early 1990s
when she began
constructing
bottari—objects
wrapped in
colourful Korean
fabrics—during a
residency at MoMA
PS1 in New York.
Kimsooja's
adaptation of this
Korean tradition
of using fabric to
bundle and
transport domestic
items not only
garnered the
international art
community's
attention, but
also became a
formal and
symbolic device
that she continued
to use throughout
her career.
The exhibition is
accompanied by the
KIMSOOJA Unfolding
book, co-published
by the Vancouver
Art Gallery and
Hatje Cantz
(Berlin), which
features over 100
images of the
artist's work as
well as essays by
Daina Augaitis,
Mary Jane Jacob,
David Morgan,
Selene Wendt and
Suh Young-Hee.
.
Artist's Talk
Tuesday, October
8, 7pm
SFU Woodwards,
World Art Centre,
149 West Hastings,
2nd Floor
.
Kimsooja speaks
about her practice
and recent work
representing Korea
in the Venice
Biennial.
Co-presented with
the SFU Vancity
Office of
Community
Engagement. Free
to the public.
Vancouver
Art Gallery
Current
Solo Exhibition