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.
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Installation view at Group Exhibition Icônes, Punta della Dogana, Venice, Italy
2 April 2023 - 26 November 2026
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Nanopolymer Glass, Black Lead Paint, Lead
each 17.5 x 17.5 x 0.5 cm