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


Our cultures, lifestyles, rituals, and belief systems may differ, but we are all connected by the air we breathe, the planet’s circular rotations, and the cycles of life and death that it sustains. This interconnectedness runs through a diverse body of Kimsooja’s work that includes sculpture, painting, film, performance, and installation.


In her latest installation, To Breathe – Coachella Valley, Kimsooja integrates various ideas from her broader practice. The glass structure serves to define a performance space, inviting the audience to interact with the essential elements of the desert: the texture of sand underfoot, the air we breathe, and the light around us. Drawing inspiration from bottaris, the fabric-encased bundles of belongings prominent in her work and in Korean culture, Kimsooja describes this installation as a “bottari of light.” By wrapping the glass surface in a unique optical film, she transforms the physical architecture into a dynamic spectrum of light and color. “This diffraction film acts as a transparent textile, featuring thousands of vertical and horizontal scratch lines akin to warp and weft, and envelops the architecture in light.”


Mirrors have also played a significant role in her exploration of light’s ephemerality. To Breathe – Coachella Valley reflects another work located in the desert of AlUla, Saudi Arabia. Connected by the air that sustains us, this iteration not only references its counterpart nearly 8,000 miles away but also acknowledges the historical origins of the Light and Space movement on the U.S. West Coast. With its ever-changing approach based on color spectrum theory from Chinese Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism, To Breathe – Coachella Valley enriches these traditions by incorporating the female perspective of East Asia. The result is an experience that is both ephemeral and profound.


Generous support is provided by Ed Campanaro and Alan Weisberg, Ron Florance, Marcy and Harry Harczak, the Posner Foundation, Janelle Reiring, Melissa and John Russo, Roswitha Smale, and Richard H. Wood.

Kimsooja, To Breathe - Archive of Prototype, Axel Vervoordt, Patio Gallery
16 March to 31 August 2024
For more information click HERE.


This exhibition, To Breathe - Archive of Prototype, features two central interventions from Kimsooja's oeuvre: her permanent stained-glass windows in Metz Cathedral (2022), and her fourteen-metre-high steel sculpture in the form of a needle, realised for Cornell University (2014) and on display today in Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Both installations uniquely engage with air and light, with our perspective on the universe, with collective memory, and with traditional and scientific industries such as glassblowing and nanotechnology.


This exhibition is the fifth in collaboration with Axel Vervoordt Gallery, and celebrates Kimsooja's solo exhibitions at De Lakenhal, Leiden and Bourse de Commerce, Paris, and her installation at the exhibition Jef Verheyen - Window on Infinity, KMSKA, Antwerp. Her work is also currently on display in the acclaimed exhibition Unravel at Barbican, London.

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


To Breathe – AlUla encapsulates Kimsooja’s contemplation of the original geographical forms and elements that shaped the region’s distinct desert and volcanic landscape. The core natural elements that took shape within this topography – from cracks in the volcanic stones and monumental sandstone mountains, to the delicate leaves of grass that, with the help of the wind, brush circular forms onto the soil – draw life through a phenomenon of contraction and expansion. As the artist explains, “it is nature’s breathing that transforms the earth’s surface across a deep arc of time.” The life cycle of the Earth in space and time has been Kimsooja’s inspiration and leaves a strong impact on her artistic vision.


The movement of wind and the path of light – which reflects, refracts, and traverses through the spiral paths of To Breathe – AlUla’s glass walls – echo the conceptual and geometrical formation of the desert landscape. Coated with a special film, the glass is a translucent canvas with a microstructure of thousands of vertical and horizontal grooves that function as prisms. Sunlight refracts through this surface into an iridescent color spectrum, casting rainbow-colored shadows and circular brushstrokes onto the sandy earth. Audiences partake in a contemplative performance by walking through and gazing at the shifting light spectrums that render visible the vibrations of colors normally invisible to the naked eyes. With Kimsooja’s words, “it is a walk in and out of a contained yet open spiral path that unfolds an abstract ‘lightscape’ – at once a drawing, a painting, and a sculpture.”

To Breathe – Constellation
20 March to 2 September 2024
For more information click HERE


Her installation in the Rotunda of the Bourse de Commerce is both monumental and ethereal: an immense mirror on the floor that, as one approaches, inverts the architecture and the order of the world with it, the sky opening up in the middle of the building, beneath our feet. Kimsooja is also taking over the 24 display cases in the Passage and the lower level of the museum with works and video installations that address her favourite themes: identity, borders, memory, exile, movement, and weaving.


“I would like to create works that are like water and air, which we cannot possess but which can be shared with everyone”, Kimsooja says. Since the late 70s, her work has asserted itself on the international art scene as an essential, universal experience. After studying painting in Seoul, she distanced herself from all art teachings and practice, embracing everyday gestures such as sewing to explore the issues of identity, involvement, individual and collective memory, and the individual’s place in the world. In the performance in 1997 that made her famous, she spent eleven days travelling across Korea perched atop a lorry loaded with bottaris, the traditional, shimmering Korean fabric bundles used to mark major events in people’s lives, from birth to marriage to death.


As a nomadic artist, a “cosmopolitan anarchist” as she calls herself, Kimsooja metaphorically uses her own body like an anonymous, almost invisible presence whose immobility and verticality become a kind of needle that threads through the fabric of the world.


The mirror that she has used to cover the floor of the Rotunda of the Bourse de Commerce plays a similar role to that of the needle or of her own body.

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.


In the participatory workshop Deductive Object: (Un)Fold, she gives visitors the opportunity to create a picture that evolves over time according to the physical and emotional experience of the imprint of rice paper in the palm of the hand. Visitors will be invited to freely fold and unfold sheets of rice paper by rolling them between their hands,
pressing the material to form balls in a shared meditative activity. The balls are then placed on long shelves, on the floor or hung from small pegs as in a laundry. Folded then
unfolded, the paper balls will collectively form compositions that are constantly metamorphosing, gradually occupying the space according to the actions of visitors.


With the participation of the Korean Cultural Centre

Kimsooja, To Breathe – Zurich, Galerie Tschudi, Zürich, Switzerland
21 January to 11 March 2023
For more information click HERE.


With her installation To Breathe – Zurich Kimsooja inscribes her work in the architecture of Galerie Tschudi. She utilizes the architectural surfaces of the space as the material support for her ‘painting’. All the windows facing the street have been covered in light-diffraction grating film: “This particular film has thousands of vertical and horizontal lines in every inch. It has a woven structure and functions like a prism, creating iridescent light when light passes through it.” (Kimsooja in conversation with Hou Hanru, 2017). The artist also tiled the floor of the gallery with mirror panels. These reflect the ceiling of the space downwards and create the illusion of a dizzying depth. The floor seems almost to dissolve: it appears like a liquid surface, in which the viewers are simultaneously reflected on an unfamiliar vertical axis. The space is otherwise empty – and yet, it is full.

Deductive Object, 2023
Argile / Clay
Courtesy Kimsooja Studio et Axel Vervoordt Gallery, Anvers /Hong Kong


This piece was conceived following the participatory performance Archive of Mind, MMCA Hyundai Motors Series 2016. The artist invited visitors to sit around a 19-meter-long elliptical table and form a sphere with a handful of clay before leaving them in place as part of a collective constellation. In Deductive Object series, Kimsooja places her clay balls in found objects and transforms them into vessels of collective memory. This particular piece was made with local clays at Axel Vervoordt Gallery Hong Kong when the artist had a solo show in 2023.
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〈연역적 오브제〉는 참여형 퍼포먼스 〈마음의 기하학〉(MMCA 현대자동차 시리즈, 2016) 이후 구상된 작업이다. 당시 작가는 관람객들을 길이 19미터에 이르는 타원형 테이블에 앉게 한 뒤 그들에게 한 줌의 점토를 손으로 빚어 구체를 만들도록 요청하였고, 이렇게 만들어진 점토 구체들은 자리에 남아 거대한 별자리의 일부로 축적되었다. 〈연역적 오브제〉 연작에서 김수자는 이러한 점토 구체들을 발견된 오브제 안에 배치함으로써 집합적 기억을 담은 하나의 그릇으로 변환시켰다. 본 작품은 2023년 홍콩의 악셀 베르보르트 갤러리에서 열린 개인전 당시, 현지 점토를 사용해 제작된 것이다.

Sewing Into Soil: Invisible Needle, Invisible Thread, 2023
Porcelaine
Courtesy Kimsooja Studio; KEWENIG, Berlin; Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Berlin, Staatliche Porzellan-Manufaktur Meissen, Germany
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Deductive Object, 2019
Porcelaine
Courtesy Kimsooja Studio et Manufacture de Sèvres – Cité de la Céramique


In Sewing Into Soil: Invisible Needle, Invisible Thread Kimsooja needles a slab of porcelain as if sewing into a fabric. The needle doubles as a paint brush and shapes an irregular surface that registers the artist’s physical action. Like on a landscape, or a freshly planted field, she associates the act of piercing into the porcelain mass with that of sowing seeds in the earth.
The porcelain balls of Deductive Object form through contrasting forces of the body. When making them, the two palms press into and rotate about a center, a point of gravitational pull, where the earthen matter absorbs the temperature and temperament of the person shaping it. The two works seen side by side draw a field of voids out of spheres, both contained and empty.
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〈흙으로 바느질하기: 보이지 않는 바늘, 보이지 않는 실〉에서 김수자는 도자판을 천을 꿰매듯 바늘로 찌르고 꿰뚫는 행위를 수행한다. 이 바늘은 동시에 붓처럼 기능하며, 작가의 신체적 행위가 고스란히 새겨진 불규칙한 표면을 만들어낸다. 마치 풍경 위에 자국을 남기거나 막 파종을 마친 밭고랑을 형성하듯, 작가는 도자 덩어리를 관통하는 바느질을 땅에 씨앗을 심는 행위와 겹쳐 사유한다.
〈연역적 오브제〉의 도자 구체는 신체의 상반된 힘을 통해 형성된다. 양손은 흙의 중심점을 향해 눌러붙고 회전하며, 그 중력의 중심에서 흙덩어리는 이를 빚는 사람의 체온과 기질을 흡수한다. 나란히 놓인 두 작품은 비어 있으면서도 품고 있는, 공백의 장을 그려낸다.

Deductive Object – Bottari, 2023
Bisque porcelain
Courtesy Kimsooja Studio; KEWENIG, Berlin; Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Berlin, Staatliche Porzellan-Manufaktur Meissen, Germany
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Kimsooja began the Deductive Object series in 1990. She stitched and wrapped used pieces of fabric around commonly found domestic objects, such as a window frame, a ladder, and farming tools. The wrapping of used cloth reaffirms the object's structure and its existence.
Here conceptualized as bottari, moon jars are made by putting together top and bottom halves of a sphere, joining two polarities into a singular whole. What was once a lump of clay gains vertical and horizontal breadth, expanding an inner space through continuous orbital movement around its center. Upon full enclosure, the artist opens a small hole at the top using the tip of a wooden needle. The vestigial surface embraces a breath of air contained within, in the form of a wrapped void.
Many of the works in the vitrines explore the link between the body’s traces (hand-shaped ceramics, fingerprint, hair) and the infinitely large (the sun and the moon, celestial bodies). Their relationships hinge on a state of duality alluded by the logic of its construct: movement and stillness, fullness and emptiness, and life and death. Produced in collaboration with the Manufacture de Sèvres, this porcelain sculpture takes the form of a traditional Korean moon jar, but without any of its functional traits. Kimsooja uses only a needle to pierce into the vertical axis that generated this spherical form, releasing the heat and air that breathes life into this earthen body during its firing process.


김수자는 1990년 〈연역적 오브제〉 연작을 시작했다. 그녀는 창틀, 사다리, 농기구와 같이 쉽게 볼 수 있는 일상 물건에 천 조각을 활용해 바느질하고 감싸는 방식을 취했다. 천으로 물건을 감싸는 행위는 오브제의 구조와 존재를 다시금 확인시켰다.
여기서 보따리로 개념화된 달항아리는 반구체(그릇, vase)의 윗부분과 아랫부분을 결합하여 두 양극을 하나의 전체로 이어 붙임으로써 만들어진다. 한 덩어리의 점토는 중심을 축으로 한 지속적인 회전 운동을 통해 상하(수직)와 좌우(수평)의 폭을 획득하며, 그 내부 공간을 확장해 나간다. 두 부분을 완전히 봉합한 뒤, 작가는 나무 바늘 끝을 이용하여 상단에 작은 구멍을 낸다. 이렇게 남겨진 흔적의 표면은 그 안에 머무는 공기의 숨결을, ‘감싸진 비어 있음’의 형태로 품어낸다.
진열장에 놓인 많은 작품들은 신체의 흔적(손 모양의 도자, 지문, 머리카락)과 태양과 달 같은 천체적 규모의 무한성과의 연결을 탐구한다. 이 관계는 움직임과 정지, 충만함과 비어 있음, 삶과 죽음이라는 구조적 논리가 암시하는 이중적 상태에 기반한다. 세브르 도자 제작소(Manufacture de Sèvres)와의 협업으로 제작된 이 도자 조각은 전통적인 한국의 달항아리 형태를 취하지만, 그 기능적 특성은 갖추고 있지 않다. 김수자는 바늘을 구형의 수직축을 따라 관통시킴으로써 소성 과정 동안 이 흙에 생명을 불어넣었던 열과 공기를 해방시킨다.

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, Wanzaki Coast, Suzu, Japan
25 February - 13 June 2021


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.

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


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 2nd Oku-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

Installation view at To Breathe - The Light House, 2020-2021, Boghossian Foundation, Villa Empain, Brussels, Belgium

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 Kimsooja: To Breathe, Yorkshire Sculpture Park and Chapel, Wakefield, UK

Installation view at Musée Sainte-Croix, For Traversées / Kimsooja, 13 site-specific installations around the city of Poitiers, Poitiers, France

Installation view at Notre-Dame La Grande, For Traversées / Kimsooja, 13 site-specific installations around the city of Poitiers, Poitiers, France

Installation view at Tour Maubergeon, For Traversées / Kimsooja, 13 site-specific installations around the city of Poitiers, Poitiers, France

Sewing Into Soil: Invisible Needle, Invisible Thread, 2019
Stoneware
Courtesy Kimsooja Studio et Manufacture de Sèvres – Cité de la Céramique
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Deductive Object – Bottari, 2019
Ensemble de 9 pièces en grès et terre cuite / A set of 9 pieces of stoneware, terracotta
Courtesy Kimsooja Studio et Manufacture de Sèvres – Cité de la Céramique


Sewing Into Soil: Invisible Needle, Invisible Thread was made in collaboration with the artisans at the Manufacture de Sèvres. The artist pierces the stoneware panel with a needle, creating a constellation of holes that records the artist’s vertical action onto a horizontal surface. It is closely associated with the act of sowing on soil, which marks a beginning of painting for Kimsooja. In dialogue with this panel in relief, Deductive Object – Bottari conceptualizes the form of moon jar, a type of traditional Korean ceramic dating from the eighteenth century. This vessel forms through the logic of wrapping, which parallels that of making a bottari (Korean cloth bundle), to contain an interior punctured by a needle hole at the top.
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〈흙으로 바느질하기: 보이지 않는 바늘, 보이지 않는 실〉은 세브르 도자기 제작소 (Manufacture de Sèvres) 장인들과 협업하여 제작되었다. 작가는 석판을 바늘로 뚫는 작업을 통해 수직적인 행위가 수평적 표면 위에 별자리처럼 기록되도록 한다. 흙 위에 씨앗을 뿌리는 행위와 유사한 이 작업은 김수자에게 있어 회화의 근원을 의미한다. 이 부조 패널과 대화하는 듯한 〈연역적 오브제 – 보따리〉는 18세기에 기원한 한국 전통 도자기인 달항아리의 형태를 개념화한 작업이다. 이 오브제는 보따리를 싸는 방식과 유사한, ‘감싸기’의 방식을 통해 구축되며, 상단에 바늘로 낸 작은 구멍을 지닌 채 내부 공간을 품도록 만들어져 있다.

Deductive Object – Bottari, 2019
Ensemble de 9 pièces en grès et terre cuite / A set of 9 pieces of stoneware, terracotta
Courtesy Kimsooja Studio et Manufacture de Sèvres – Cité de la Céramique
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Deductive Object, 2019
Stoneware
Courtesy Kimsooja Studio et Sèvres – Cité de la Céramique
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Moon jar is a traditional Korean ceramic dating from the eighteenth century, known for evoking the full moon through its round shape and brilliant color. Irregularities in the material texture and a slight asymmetry caused by the assembly of upper and lower bowls in the shape of hemispheres are the essence of its beauty, where the aesthetic imperfection makes the object even closer to nature. This series of five moon jar-shaped sculptures (out of nine as a set of installation in stoneware and terracotta) was made in collaboration with the artisans at the Manufacture de Sèvres. Kimsooja conceptualizes the moon jar as a bottari (bundle of fabric in Korean), a concept of wholeness and totality, which she developed over the past 40 years of her artistic practice.
Ceramics exemplify a transcultural practice that connects human rituals with nature by integrating earth, water, fire, and air. As part of the moon jar series, Kimsooja conceived the large stoneware and the smaller spheres and chunks as variations of bottari. The act of spinning a pottery wheel parallels a process of emptying the center, while an instance of grabbing or circling two palms around a mass of earth registers a center that is full. The stoneware’s asymmetrical form, which the artist describes as recalling the shape of a face, creates a dialogue with the hand-shaped clay beside it; all suggest a portrait of our body and our mind.


달항아리는 18세기에 제작되기 시작한 한국의 전통 도자기로, 둥근 형태와 눈부신 백색을 통해 보름달을 환기시키는 아름다움으로 잘 알려져 있다. 위·아래의 반구 형태의 그릇을 맞붙여 만드는 제작 방식에서 비롯되는 질감의 불규칙성과 미세한 비대칭성은 달항아리 미학의 핵심으로 여겨지며, 이러한 ‘불완전성’이 오히려 사물을 자연에 더욱 가깝게 만든다.
석재와 테라코타로 구성된 아홉 점 가운데, 다섯 점의 달항아리 형상 조각은 세브르 도자 제작소(Manufacture de Sèvres)의 장인들과 협업하여 제작되었다. 김수자는 이러한 달항아리를 지난 40여 년간 자신의 예술 실천 속에서 발전시켜 온, 온전함과 전체성을 나타내는 또 다른 ‘보따리’로 개념화한다.
도예는 흙, 물, 불, 공기를 통합함으로써 인간의 의례와 자연을 연결하는 대표적인 초문화적(transcultural) 실천이라고 할 수 있다. 이는 달항아리 연작의 일환으로, 김수자는 대형 석재 조각과 더 작은 구체 및 점토 덩어리를 보따리의 다양한 변주로 개념화하였다. 물레를 돌리는 행위는 중심을 비워내는 과정에 해당하는 반면, 흙덩어리를 두 손바닥으로 움켜쥐거나 원을 그리듯 감싸는 순간은 꽉 찬 중심의 형성을 의미한다. 작가가 얼굴의 형상을 연상한다고 언급한 바 있는 석재 조각의 비대칭적 형태는 그 옆에 놓인 손의 자취가 남은 점토 덩어리와 조형적 대화를 이루고 있으며, 이는 우리의 신체와 정신을 나타내는 초상을 은유한다.