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Kimsooja Studio, Seoul
Kimsooja Studio, Seoul
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.
Photo by Shim Kyuho
(Left to Right:)
1 Kimsooja, Meta-Painting, 2024, Black paint on glass, 160x112cm
2 Kimsooja, To Breathe, 2024, Site-specific installation with diffraction grating film, Dimensions variable
3 Kimsooja, Meta-Painting, 2024, Black paint on linen canvas, 162.2x112.1x6cm
4 Kimsooja, Meta-Painting, 2024, Black paint on linen canvas, 53x40.9x4cm
5 Kimsooja, Meta-Painting, 2024, Black paint on linen canvas, 53x40.9x4cm
6 Kimsooja, Meta-Painting, 2024, Black paint on linen canvas, 90.9x65.1x4cm
7 Kimsooja, Meta-Painting, 2024, Black paint on linen canvas, 116.8x80.3cm
8 Kimsooja, Meta-Painting, 2024, Black paint on glass, 116.7x80.3cm
9 Kimsooja, Sewing into Darkness, 2023, Archival pigment print, 59x74cm each
10 Kimsooja, Topology of Time, 2016, Giclée (Inkjet) Print, Print: 170.5x114.1cm, Image: 147.9x91.4cm
Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, Canada
Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, Canada
13 July, 2024 – 21 April, 2025
For more information, click HERE
Photo by Toni Hafkenscheid
To Breathe, Site specific installation consisting of diffraction grating film and mirror floor panels, size variable
Installation view at Light: Visionary Perspectives, Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, Canada
To Breathe – Constellation
To Breathe – Constellation
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.
© Tadao Ando Architect & Associates, Niney et Marca Architectes, agence Pierre-Antoine Gatier.
Photo: Florent Michel/11h45/Pinault Collection.
© Kimsooja/ADAGP, Paris, 2024.
Site-specific installation with mirror panels
Courtesy of Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, Axel Vervoordt Gallery, Galerie Tschudi and Kimsooja Studio
To Breathe – AlUla
To Breathe – AlUla
In the Presence of Absence, Desert X AlUla 2024, Alula, Saudi Arabia
9 Feb 2024 to 23 March 2024
For more information click HERE.
Photo by Lance Gerber
Site-specific Installation with Diffraction Grating Films, 42 panels of 2.80 x 1.80m
Courtesy The Royal Commission for AlUla and Kimsooja Studio