Desert X 2025 Coachella Valley
Desert Hot Springs, CA
March 8 - May 11 2025
For more information click HERE.

The Meta-Painting series explores the fundamental principles of painting and its origins. It began in 2020 at the Wanås Konst Sculpture Park in Sweden, where Kimsooja produced linen spun from flax that she had planted, cultivated, and harvested. It was later woven into a canvas surface as a form of painting that need not be painted. The project reconstructs painting as a life-generating cycle, and the unpainted canvas investigates the conceptual relationship between painting, agriculture, and textiles.

The black Meta-Paintings conceptualize and bring to reality the absence of light and surface. They take form as both a flat and a wrapped surface, continuing the formalistic trajectory of Kimsooja’s folded and unfolded Bottari. While the depth of black color absorbs nearly all light and shadow, its surface resists our discernment. The piece points toward painting as a place of not knowing, a site of vulnerability, and a moment of beginning.

As a counterpart to the Meta-Painting series, To Breathe is a site-specific installation that prismatically diffracts natural sunlight into radiating spectral bands, or concentric double-axis brushstrokes of vertical and horizontal colors. The displacement of lightwaves guides the eyes back and forth across the threshold of architecture, effectively turning the act of gazing into a form of weaving the surface.

Light: Visionary Perspectives
Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, Canada
13 July, 2024 – 21 April, 2025
For more information, click HERE

16 March to 31 August 2024
For more information click HERE.

To Breathe – Constellation
Installation View of the exhibition “Le monde comme il va”, Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, Paris, 2024.
For more information click HERE.

20 March to 2 September 2024
For more information click HERE.


Directrice générale / Executive Director: Emma Lavigne
Responsable des expositions: Charles Halperin

In the Presence of Absence, Desert X AlUla 2024, Alula, Saudi Arabia
9 Feb 2024 to 23 March 2024
For more information click HERE.

Kimsooja's site-specific installation with diffraction grating film, To Breathe is integrated into the Mairie de Saint-Ouen station's exchange hall(Paris Métro - line 13&14). To Breathe is an immersive installation, using the principle of light diffraction to create a sensory and poetic atmosphere designed to resonate with travelers of all ages. On the glass walls that surround the void of the exchange room overlooking the metro tracks, the rays of light break down into multiple spectrums of color, acting as a three-dimensional painting that redefines the space. Each moment within this installation promises a distinct encounter.
For more information click HERE.

Installation view at Group Exhibition Icônes, Punta della Dogana, Venice, Italy
2 April 2023 - 26 November 2026
For more information about the exhibition, please click HERE.

On Galeries Lafayette’s invitation, Kimsooja illuminates the department store’s magnificent architecture with her light-oriented installation To Breathe. By covering the iconic glass dome in Galeries Lafayette’s Paris Haussmann store with diffraction grating film, Kimsooja transforms the dome’s external surfaces and internal spaces into iridescent landscapes that shift and change throughout the day. For this site-specific installation (the first in Paris on this scale), Kimsooja explores the building’s sensory and meditative qualities by focusing visitors’ attention on light to create an environment conducive to contemplation. Space in between double dome on the 5th floor is exceptionally opened to the public for the installation.
For more information click HERE.

In 2023, Kimsooja captures the underground space of Cisternerne. The audience is invited into an etheral space where light, projected into iridescent color spectra, transforms the former water reservoir into a sacred sea of light. Every year, the Frederiksberg Museums invites an artist to create a site-specific work for the 4,400 square meters of Cisternerne, into which the daylight never reaches, the humidity is close to 100%, the reverberation is of 17 seconds, and the temperature fluctuates between 4 and 16 degrees Celsius. In an extensive installation of light and color, Kimsooja transforms Cisternerne into an ephemeral universe, where the light radiates like brushstrokes on transparent canvases and breaks the darkness. The work is comprised of diffraction grating film that is mounted on transparent panels, which altogether let light pass through a microscopic surface of horizontal and vertical prisms. Rays of light split into vibrant colors that dynamically weave in and out of the subterranean colonnades.
For more information click HERE.

The workshop Kimsooja conceived for Paper Tube Studio originates in her previous body of work, notably the Bottari. It is a “life sculpture”. This surface is used to wrap, or internalize the memory of self and others through the act of making a single knot. It is a work that is at once a painting, a sculpture, and action. In this context, Deductive Object: (Un)fold offers visitors to participate in making a painting that transforms through the physical and emotional dimensions impressed onto the tactile surface of rice paper in the palms of their hands.

As the first artist to exhibit at Meridiano, Kimsooja is conscious of the gallery’s name, which originates from meridian — a circular line connecting the north and south poles of the earth at the shortest vertical distance — as well as the exhibition space’s architectural elements, which are exposed to the intense direct sunlight along Oaxaca’s Pacific Coast. Jaoseon’s initiates a performance that places the verticality of the body at the moment when the light is transformed into a geometric structure within the gallery.
For more information, click HERE.

Nanopolymer Glass, Black Lead Paint, Lead
each 17.5 x 17.5 x 0.5 cm

Making Worlds, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
For more information, click HERE


In occasion of Sydney Modern Project's inauguration, Archive of Mind is now on view at Art Gallery of New South Wales in Australia. With the artwork, Kimsooja invites visitors to collect a handful of clay, sit at the large work surface, and empty their minds of distraction; to sink into the experience of forming a ball of clay between the hands, rolling and wrapping it into itself like an infinite Bottari. The process transforms simple, everyday actions into moments of meditation and transcendence. As each sphere is completed, it is added to the table, forming an organic arrangement that holds the imprint of each maker. Archive of mind is accompanied by Unfolding Sphere, a subtle soundscape composed of two sounds: the artist gurgling water and clay balls being pressed, rolled and colliding with one another. At some moments it recalls a distant thunderstorm, at others, a burbling stream.


This presentation of Archive of Mind is supported by a grant from the Australia-Korea Foundation, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Purchase with funds provided by the Art Gallery of New South Wales Foundation 2018

Consisting of semicircular arches stretched over the canal that get lit delicately in the evening, To Breathe – Leiden symbolically attests to the connection between art and science that is Leiden’s core character. Furthermore, the series of arches across the canal is a metaphor for Kimsooja’s key motif of sewing and weaving, which also historically grounds the city’s textile tradition.
The Lucas Art Award was presented by the Lucas van Leyden Fund, responsible for bringing contemporary art in the city. The work was executed by Anything is Possible and supported by Axel Vervoordt Gallery and it is on view for 3 years, until 2025.

The Cathédrale Saint-Étienne in Metz features new stained glass windows, created by Kimsooja. They are installed in the bays of the triforium in the south arm of the transept. The artist offers an abstract work designed to be a gentle experience, centred on colour and the changing light throughout the day and the seasons. The stained glass panes were created in collaboration with the French master glass maker, Pierre-Alain Parot, using a combination of blown glass and dichroic glass.
This public art commission of a permanent piece was initiated by the Ministry of Culture, France. The project, overseen by the Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs of the Grand Est region, in close liaison and with constant collaboration with the clergy responsible for the cathedral, was designed as a highlight of the celebrations of the eighth centenary of this Gothic structure.

To Breathe (2021) is a site-specific artwork installed in the museum’s rotunda, where diffraction grating film is used to refract sunlight that enters the circular space through its dome-shaped skylight, illuminating a series of window frames that enclose its central cavity. The diffraction grating film allows natural light to constantly transform in tune with the flow of time, changes in weather and movements of the sun throughout the four seasons, enveloping the interior spiral staircase and surrounding walls in prismatic light before reaching ground level, where it casts a circular splash of color. Breathing within the main axis of the museum that connects its four floors of galleries, this light converts the space into a sanctum. Another type of special reflective film that responds to soft light is installed to interact with the rhythm of the window frames along the spiral staircase. This reflective film yields rainbow spectrums and generates unique compositions according to viewers’ movements, resonating with Kimsooja’s ongoing investigation of painting and two-dimensionality. As light passes through the diffraction grating film, which is covered in nano-sized scratches that act as a prism, the interior space is filled with iridescent rays. Such refraction and breathing of the light awaken the audience’s sentiments and thoughts, allowing for both a metaphorical and embodied experience of the artist’s nonmaterial practice of “non-doing, non-making” with light painting. Transposed into light in To Breathe, Kimsooja’s artistic language transcends notions of materiality and delivers the breath of nature unto all beings within its embrace, from the moment the very first life took its first breath until the present, in the same way that light has always unconditionally sheltered and touched countless beings.

Oku-Noto Triennale: To Breathe – Suzu, Wanzaki Coast, Suzu, Japan
25 February - 13 June 2021


Kimsooja (b. 1957), a conceptual artist based in New York, Paris and Seoul, participates in the 2nd Oku-Noto Triennale with a presentation of two site-specific installations that convey the immaterial totality of life and art. Located at the northern tip of Japan’s Ishikawa Prefecture and surrounded by the sea on three sides, Suzu City was once a prosperous hub of maritime trade; in recent generations, however, it has become a dwindling town whose residents have largely resettled in other regions. By hosting the Oku-Noto Triennale, an art festival that unites local culture and contemporary art, the city seeks to revitalize its local communities and the region as a whole. To that end, Kimsooja’s site-specific works are installed in carefully chosen locations – a field located at the foot of a mountain on the Wanisaki coast and an old abandoned house – in order to form intimate associations with the city’s history and geography.


To Breathe: Mirror (2021) consists of a series of mirror panels installed along the oceanfront that reflect the horizon against a mountainous backdrop. Throughout Kimsooja’s oeuvre, mirrors function as a medium for prolonged questioning and investigation of the conditions of painting, as well as an extension of her “needle” concept in which she seeks to patch up divisions of our times and recover the innate value of human beings. Newly presented at the Oku-Noto Triennale, To Breathe: Mirror resonates and breathes with the natural landscape of the Wanisaki coast. The work integrates both water and earth, reflecting the Other in order to negate the sea’s capacity to demarcate territorial borders according to the modern concept of nations and propose a message of mending and embracing both physical and psychological ruptures.


To Breathe: Suzu (2021) introduces diffraction grating film to the windows of an abandoned house. Nano-sized scratches covering this thin film operate as prisms that filter natural light by refracting the sun's rays to produce small, fantastic rainbow spectrums. Unveiling a new light painting as a spatial intervention within a deserted house that has ceased to serve as a site of shelter and storage for local fishermen, this work constitutes a sincere endeavor to breathe regeneration and healing into the space. Viewers who experience the light painting on the house’s interior, or look through its windows to behold the iridescent trajectories of visible light outside, will feel a profound sense of connection by witnessing the water, forest and sky of this coastal landscape merge into a single artwork. In the spirit of supporting artistic collaboration even during a global pandemic, the 2ndOku-Noto Triennale runs from September 4 to November 6th, 2021.

Installation at Wanas Konst Art Gallery, Wanas, Sweden
For Wanås Foundation, Sowing Into Painting, Multidimensional Art Project Including Site-specific Installations
Courtesy of Wanås Konst and Kimsooja Studio

Site Specific Installation at Wanas Konst Sculpture Park, Wanas, Sweden
For Wanås Foundation, Sowing Into Painting, Multidimensional Art Project Including Site-specific Installations
Courtesy of Wanås Konst and Kimsooja Studio

Site-specific Installation at Wanas Konst haybarn, Wanas, Sweden
For Wanås Foundation, Sowing Into Painting, Multidimensional Art Project Including Site-specific Installations
Courtesy of Wanås Konst and Kimsooja Studio

Site-specific Project at Wanas Konst, Sweden
Work in Progress with Two Planted Varieties of Flax Seeds (for Flax Seeds Oil and Linen) in Wanås Konst Open Fields
Courtesy of Wanås Konst and Kimsooja Studio
For Wanås Foundation, Sowing Into Painting, Multidimensional Art Project Including Site-specific Installations

Installation at the 1st Asia Society Triennial: We Do Not Dream Alone: Art and creativity under lockdown, Asia Society Museum, New York, USA
For more information, click HERE

Site-specific Installation with Diffraction Grating Films
Courtesy of Boghossian Foundation, Axel Vervoordt Gallery and Kimsooja Studio

Single Channel Video
28:18, 5.1 Sound, HD
Edition of 6 plus 1 artist's proof
Commissioned by the City of Poitiers

Site-specific Installation with Mirrors Panels and Diffraction Grating Films, and Sound Performance The Weaving Factory(2004-2013)
Courtesy of Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Axel Vervoordt Gallery, and Kimsooja Studio

Site-specific Participatory Consisting of Clay balls, Elliptical Wooden Table, and Sound Performance Unfolding Sphere(2016)
Courtesy of Kimsooja Studio

Site-specific Lighting Installation
Courtesy of the City of Poitiers and Kimsooja Studio