Time and space of the horizontal and the vertical

• When the vertical and the horizontal meet, they form a cross. As they come together as a cross, harmony comes forth in a relation of interdependence. Even when seeing the horizontal line and the vertical line separately, we easily conjure up their intersection. From the early ages of primitive culture or ancient culture, the repetition or rearrangements of the horizontal and vertical lines were used as signs for arithmetic, or further as symbolic signs for communication and letters. The cross being formed as a result of the perpendicular intersection was considered a sign of perfection, more so than the square composed of two sets of equally measured horizontal lines and vertical lines, particularly because of the conception that its centripetal force was greater. The ┼ even when turned over to an ╳ was regarded as a sign of perfection that displayed harmony and completion. This is why the ancient Latins devised to write ╳ after the number nine, and the ancient Chinese also used ┼ as their sign for ten. The human body as a measure of the world is also in the form of a cross. The human limbs and organs are structured centripetally: the body with arms spread and legs together form ┼, and the copy of the human body drawn by Vitruvius in AD 1st century and later again by Leonardo da Vinci forms an ╳ with all the limbs spread apart. Furthermore, the cross symbolically signified the connection between the heavens - the world of the gods - and earth. Considered as a connection between the transcendental world and the secular world, the intersection of the horizontal line and the vertical line is also called the 'world's axis.' Let us look at the cross in Christianity and the swastika(卍) in Buddhism. The former signifies the tribulations on earth and glory in heaven and the latter refers to the cosmic symbol of the connection of heaven and earth; both imply psychological healing as well as religious salvation. Thus in Western culture, the cathedral - the dwelling place of God - had as its basis the floor plan of a cross as well as the cruciform vault, and the mandala in Hinduism and Buddhism had as its basic structure the cross intersection of the horizontal and the vertical, symbolizing the order of the cosmos that pointed towards the heavens and the earth. The cross structure, divided into four areas of the upper-lower hemispheres and the left-right hemispheres, also symbolized the different aspects of a human being: the cognitive and sensory, the intuitive and affective. One can find both in the Confucianist Book of Changes and in Buddhism that the four directions in the horizontal-vertical intersection symbolize the cosmic order formed by water, earth, fire and wind. As is well known, the Korean vowels also make use of the horizontal and vertical lines: ㅡ as earth, ㅣas the sky, and the middle dot as the human.

• The horizontal-vertical form frequently appears in art as well. From the primitive arts to contemporary, from decorative art to fine art, the horizontal-vertical lines generally appears as signs that signify the universe and man. When looking at ancient art and primitive artifacts, one frequently finds horizontal-vertical intersections, cross structures, and grids on murals, ceramics, textile and basket weaving, etc. As explicated in art psychology, this phenomenon may be derived from the human effort to control and impute order upon a world, or nature, that is otherwise too vast and unpredictable. Wilhelm Worringer, too, explains the horizontal-vertical structure in his 'Abstraction and Empathy' as an order standing in contrast to the disorder of nature. Commentaries on abstract art generally mention Cezanne's attitude that reorganized nature into a sturdy order of geometry as well as the geometric abstraction of Kandinsky and Mondrian's horizontal-vertical system and Klee's hieroglyph-like symbol paintings as a way to elucidate that the context of the horizontal-vertical system is the expression of the abstract painters' worldview. This form of argument, taking the form of structuralist epistemology, argues that the horizontal-vertical structure perceived as a symbol of man and the universe has been generally inherited in artists from the primitive ages to contemporary times (i.e., ranging from the grid work in minimalist paintings to cross-like shaped-canvas). The cross as an intersection of the horizontal and vertical lines is an extremely condensed sign, implying with the lines' directions all five senses of humans, inner psychology and even spiritual content, thus rendering inevitable to admit that the artist's faculty for abstraction operates in tandem. The anthropologist Levi-Strauss, having been much interested in art, explains in his "Elementary Structures of Kinship" that the basic structure of dichotomy that formed an internal relation of interdependence is effectively at work in various cultures and arts, an argument aided by the Saussurean intersection of the diachronic and synchronic (horizontal and vertical, respectively) axes.

• Kimsooja, the subject of this article, is surely a painter, though she does not paint on the canvas. Instead, she is an artist who takes as her premise the horizontal-vertical structure as a general order for the world and mankind, further expressing this premise by coupling it with metaphysical thought. In this respect, the works of Kim is an interesting metaphor on the world, her series a continuous metonymy on the horizontal-vertical structure. The meditation on the basic structure of the horizontal and the vertical is consistently in effect as the logic and archetype of her production, manifested from the fabric-weaving series, "Sewing," through "Deductive Objet" all the way to the "Needle Woman" series and "Earth, Water, Fire, Air" series. In this respect, it is important to remember that the artist herself has repeatedly mentioned in interviews – and especially in her master's thesis, "A Study on the Universality and Hereditariness of the Plastic Sign: A Focus on the Cruciform Sign (1984)" –that, like the Eastern yin and yang, the binary structure of the horizontal and vertical is the fundamental system which encompasses and composes the world. This article intends to examine, albeit briefly, the transition of Kim's thought from canvas to fabric as well as how the horizontal and vertical lines and their cruciform intersection are actualized in her work.

The Transition of Thought I: From Canvas to Fabric

• For Kim, the tools for expression are no longer limited to the canvas, paint and brush. The flat surface and rectangular stretcher of the canvas is but a tool for representation, whether concrete or abstract, a rigid device that in inapt to take the place of the free flow of thought. Thus the artist selects from fabric, a flexible material among the components of the canvas. The "Sewing" series (1983-1988), the first work with fabric, brought forth works of indeterminate forms, sewing together various scraps of fabric. If one would insist on calling these pictorial art, would it be considered a kind of Color Field abstractionism? But in contrast to the hard-edge or Color Field paintings of 70s America, one does not find the homogeneity of the color surface or a precisely cut contour. Rather, the different scraps of fabric, varying in size and stained with traces of drawing, are connected without being tidied up – their surfaces rugged, edges irregular and seams tattered. In place of an artist's will for perfection, the materiality proper to fabric is wholly accentuated. Even still, this should not be categorized under a kind of Dadaist act of choosing anti-aesthetic objets or a tendency for conceptual art. Fabric and sewing is Kim's subject matter by which she expresses the world of humans like herself–entangled, knotted, and contemplating the fundamental structures of the world. Pieces of fabric are linked both horizontally and vertically, sewn in a manner that is interdependent and mutually supportive. As a result, the fact that the 'woven' scraps sustain a horizontal-vertical structure without sagging down despite the disappearance of the stretcher is called to our attention. Replacing the wooden stretcher, the source of the tautness that pulls the fabric is the relational device, that is, the 'countless stitches of sewing.' Thus is the support that holds the balance between gravity and the pieces of fabric.

• Here, I would like to mention the source by which the work's order is formed: the binary structure between the tension of the needlework and the flexibility of the fabric. It is often regarded as merely coincidental this appearance of the working with sewn fabric pieces. As the artist repeatedly mentioned, this method suddenly crossed her mind in 1983 as she was tacking up the duvet cover with her mother. This anecdote is well known through various writings, but I reference it once more, for it offers a clue to the embarking of the artist's distinct art world: "In the quotidian act of tacking up bed sheets with my mother, I experienced an intimate yet wonderful sense of unity of my thoughts, sensibilities and actions. I found the possibility to contain such abundance of memory and pain, even the affection for life in that unity. The weaving of the weft and warp as a basic structure of the fabric, our primordial sense of color in our fabrics, the self-identification with fabric in the act of weaving through flat surface, and the strange nostalgia evoked in it… all of this was entirely mesmerizing." (The Artist's Notes, 1988 Gallery Hyundai) Later the artist reminisces this experience, remarking that the moment she tacks the pointy needle into the fabric, she feels the energy of the universe penetrating her entire body. This astounding anecdote on a rather serendipitous experience would be repeated in every of her interviews, becoming a clue that renews our awareness to what the archetype of her work is.

• I would like to interpret the 'moment she tacks the point needle' into the duvet cover spread across the floor as a ground breaking moment of penetrating the surface screen of pictorial art that persisted for several hundred years. Like the Spatialist painter Lucio Fontana who pierced the uni-colored canvas with a sharped-edged dagger, Kim also realized pictorial art that was no longer a screen of illusion but a three-dimensional structure as she weaved through the surface of the duvet cover, piercing holes into it. What is of particular importance here is the perpendicular penetration of the needle into the sheets horizontally spread on the floor. This three-dimensional relation between horizontality and verticality is thought to be a decisive opportunity for Kim - only familiar with the illusion of the surface - to identify the reality of painting, or the hidden structure of the canvas. For some time, pictorial art has been identified as a conceptual representation of the illusion created by the screen of paint covering the canvas surface. But once the shift in thought takes place where the signifiers, or the structural elements – the materiality of color, the fabric of the canvas, the wooden stretcher that supports the screen – is thought to define the meaning of painting, the modernist equation of 'painting = flat, rectangular screen' is also rendered null. Further more, when one stretches the canvas or the bed sheets, it sees that they are also products of the horizontal-vertical system where threads are intersecting. When Kim decided to suspend the bed sheets in the exhibition center for the audience to be able to see both sides of the fabric, this method of installation was of particular importance in terms of confirming the three-dimensionality and spatial topology of fabric.

Transition of Thought II: From Sewing to Deductive Objet to Bottari

• In any occasion of the "Sewing" series, one is able to find sewn horizontal-vertical joints. Taking "Heaven and Earth (1984)" has a representative example, the work is of a horizontal-vertical structure formed by sewing various-sized square fabric pieces. The contour is also in the form of a cross. Here we find the horizontal-vertical system, frequently encountered in the history of cultural anthropology, appearing as an component sign of the universe and the archetype of production. Other works such as "Earth," "Your Portrait," and "Wall" repeatedly display the cruciform sign, and one recognizes that this is a binary composition of the horizontal-vertical signifying the yin and yang. Around 1989, the "Deductive Objet" appears. This second series is significant in that it marks a transition from surface work to three-dimensional work. Composed of works that covers or wraps curios or everyday objects with fabric, this series is of the flexibility of fabric added to the rigidity of the objet. If the previous work was an inductive production where the needlework that gave fabric tension gradually worked towards completing a form, this series worked oppositely. The artist given from the beginning an objet already structured in a horizontal-vertical manner, then she works deductively to reveal its original form by wrapping fabric around it. The motivation behind this way of production, also known through interviews, was the allure of the plain and clear structural beauty inherent in antique articles like the carrier(ji-gae), the sliding door frame, the spool, the shuttle, the clotheshorse, the ladder, all that evoked old memories. Coincidentally enough, these everyday articles each form a horizontal-vertical structure. The simple geometric structural beauty found in the deductive objets of the laid carrier or the doorframe and the trapezoidal ladder – it is not so different from the horizontal-vertical mosaic structure found in the "Sewing" series. It may be considered different because of the shift from surface structure to three-dimensional structure and the changes in material, but the structural systems are equivalent between both series; one can say that thought made the transition from the plane geometry of the x-y axis to the solid geometry of the xyz axis where depth is added. "Untitled (1991)" a work where a large circular steel rim used by gymnasts covered by fabric may not seem like a horizontal-vertical structure. But if were to imagine this round three-dimensional objet that rolls through space to be spread out on surface, the horizontal-vertical structure of a long, narrow ladder is conjured.

• When we notice that the rigid objet is the wooden support for the canvas and the tautly stretched canvas is the surface, the inference that this is another adaptation of the structural deconstruction of the canvas is possible. Before we go too far, it is necessary that we compare this with the analytic experimental painting movement, Supports/Surfaces, that took place in 70s France. Starting from a point of self-criticism on paintings, the artists of Supports/Surfaces revealed the very structure of the canvas in an effort based on structural epistemology to break away from the superior ideas in pictorial art, making various objets of binary oppositions by considering fabric and wood as signifiers that made meaning. It is difficult to know at the moment how much of this profound process Kim consulted, but a critical discourse that objectively reveals their inter-relation seems like a significant attempt to be made at another opportunity.

• At any rate, the "deductive objet" series, formed from three-dimensional structures, also has a site-specific characteristic in that it acquires meaning when it is installed in a particular location. For example, cloths hung on the walls or those stacked on the floor of the exhibition hall can only form meaning by covering that particulate site called the exhibition hall. Needless to say, the hard wall and floor stand in binary opposite to the soft pieces of fabric, following the production archetype of horizontal-vertical. Rocks in nature and multifarious pieces of fabric in "Lying in Nature," which took place in the valleys of Oksan Seowon in Kyungju, and the table and bed sheets in the "Deductive objets", in which they are used as tablecloths in cafeteria and restaurant of Biennale, are another cases that they leave the exhibition halls and become reinstalled in the specific sites of nature and the city, realizing the horizontal-vertical system by covering the given structure with cloth. The "deductive objet" I found most interesting was "Encounter, Seeing through Sewing"(1998-2002). The artist's body, upright, is none but the pointed needle, and the multi-colored pieces of cloth stacked on top of her head are that bed sheets right on the verge of being pierced. The issue concerning the Korean woman's identity from the viewpoint of general feminism at the sight of the new bride, both beautiful and doleful wrapped around in multi-colored fabric, is one to be dealt elsewhere. Here, we want to take a step away from feminism and first take on the interpretive project of inferring the more fundamental structural production archetype of the horizontal and vertical.

• Following the "Deductive Objet," the "Bottari" series, birthed in the PS1 studio in New York, is considered to be the case where the artist's thoughts transition from surface to three-dimensionality, then to location, then finally into another space. An everyday object consisting of wrapping cloth (bojagi) and miscellaneous contents, the bottari is associated with the nomadic origins of the Korean people, the moving customs of the commoner as well as the nomadic memories of the artist's childhood. Here, let us attend to the three-dimensional structure that the artist must have had to consider when wrapping the bottari each time. First, the act of taking four corners of the cloth and tying them together: The flat cloth is born into three-dimensional bottari only after the four corners of the cloth are gathered to the corner of the content and knotted cross-wise. The knot formed here is balanced only when the corners cross at right angles, and thus gives form to a proper bottari. If not, the knot of the bottari loses balance and the content inside becomes unpleasantly disfigured as if organs were spilling out. The most important moment in the transformation of the cloth into bottari (bojagi into bottari) is when the four corners of the cloth come together to form a horizontal-vertical cruciform. Anyone who has tied a bojagi would understand the important of this moment. One repeatedly ties and unties the knot to check the balance of the horizontal-vertical knot structure, also making sure with his eyes whether the bottari has enough tension to stay parallel to the ground. Only after this final inspect can we pick up the bottari and take our steps in movement.

• As the "Bottari" series is where Kim was able to establish her reputation as an international artist, its significance is noteworthy. The rectangular surface structure of the canvas turned into a variable form of three-dimensional structure, and from the screen where the image was permanently uncovered, into a structure where revealing/concealing, opening/closing are repeated through the untying/tying of the bottari, also possessing a kind of spontaneity where revealing/concealing co-exist through glimpses of cloths caught between the gaps in the bottari. On the other hand, the force of the bojagi that adds tension by tightly tying otherwise loosely sprawled fabric is nothing but the equivalent of the stretcher of the canvas, the needlework of the bed sheets, the objets that conferred formed onto multifarious pieces of fabric, each imposing tension. Put in a different location at every turn, the bottari is a vertical structure moving parallel along the horizon as well as an objet that actively communicates with its spectators with the splendid display of Eastern color and distinct ethnic presence in its space.

Time and space of the horizontal and the vertical

The place where the flowing universe and the mind stays##

• After "Wandering Cities – the Bottari Truck 2727km" in 1997, Kim presents the "Needle Woman" series and "The Laundering Woman" series consecutively. As if to weave different regions by riding the bottari truck through local highways and mountain roads, this time Kim becomes the needle (vertical axis) herself and passes through cities all over the world and throngs of people (horizontal axis), going beyond time and space to connect memory and experience as one. The artist always appears with her back against us, her long hair tightly tied, and we see in her surrounding crowds of people of various physiques and skin color passing her by in waves. But it is difficult to discern whether it is the artist who passes through the city dwellers all over the world or the other way around. When we look at water flowing, we are confused about whether we are flowing or the water. Such confusion of consciousness gives a sudden realization that whether it is the other or I that move, the logic of flowing remains the same. This brings to mind the Buddhist account that says beyond the uncertainty of human perception, all things flow and change and there is no immutable substance. The Avatamska Sutra also states that the agent of the flowing external world is one's mind. So the Needle Woman, standing still and looking at the waves of people, or the river with particles of a cremated body floating, seems to be a sign representing both the ever-renewing universe and the condition of the mind prone to change in an instant. Also, where the sky meets the earth, i.e. the horizon, the body of the artist lies at an angle with her limbs stretched horizontally. In this case the Needle Woman lies on flat ground, but in relation to the soaring mountains, trees and buildings, or even people moving around upright, her body lies at right angles. Thus it becomes relative which is horizontal and which is vertical. When one turns upside down and looks at the world, it is the world that seems turned upside down. The "Earth, Water, Fire, Air" series, her most recent work, displays the every changing landscapes of nature with 7-8 large projects installed depending on the kind of exhibition space. From Lanzarote Island in Spain and Pacaya Volcano in Guatemala, the artist recorded footage of lava erupting and solidifying, the crashing waves of the oceans and wet fog, the clouds and win, the movement of the earth and sand, and from Greenland she captured footage of glaciers – such video footage puts the spectator before the massive force of primordial nature. The artist is nowhere to be seen, but because the very viewpoint that captured the panoramic vision of nature is projected on the screen, the artist is beyond the boundaries of presence and absence. Flowing scenes of the 'Earth, Water, Fire, Air' are projected on all the walls, and the spectator who stands in the middle of the exhibition hall feels as the vertical axis, feeling as though all things in nature are continuously flowing.

• In Buddhism, when referring to the human being, one speaks of the Five Elements: the material element of body, the spiritual elements of sentiment, imagination, volition and judgement. One can argue that in this work the artist is absent, for she is condensed into invisible spiritual elements. But because the four basic components of the material element of body are 'Earth, Water, Fire, Air', it can also be said that through the landscape of 'Earth, Water, Fire, Air', the artist and the rest of human existence is presence as a metaphor. Like the ancient Greek materialist Heraclitus argued, is not the human body born already composed of the four elements of earth, water, fire and wind, only to decompose back to the four, into nature? Then the images of nature in "Earth, Water, Fire, Air" may be like the image before a human's formation as well as the image it will return to according to the cycle of disappearance. Thus "Earth, Water, Fire, Air" series is, as mentioned in the artist's interview in February 2010, a meditative work where "questions of the unity of nature and mankind are posed." Furthermore, this serendipitous spark is that which confers the dynamism of life upon the cycle of the four elements, that is, 'Earth, Water, Fire, Air' in which earth becomes water, water becomes fire and fire becomes air; it is a spark that happens at the very moment the vertical spirit (mind or soul) intersects, fixed upright like the needle.