REVIEW

Yunsoo Kim

(Drift) - From Her Sea to His Sky, Between Her Mountain and His Cloud, 2007, ultramarine blue pastel on canvas, 130 × 194 cm

Flow

Yunsoo Kim

Yunsoo Kim’s art is about flow; the flow of air, wind, or water. Sometimes this flow can be felt by staring into one work, while other times it carries across several pictorial planes arranged in space. Each work features a minimal description rendered in a single color, perhaps blue, or yellow, or a very light gray. Hence, the exhibition space is filled with one flow, one breath, and one emotion. But given that the space is so sparse and thin, it seems inaccurate to say that it is “filled with” anything. Dealing with movements that are just beyond our grasp, Kim’s works convey the most minimal swaying of matter that is almost immaterial.

“Ultramarine” means “beyond the sea.”

Thus, this mystical blue is not only a color, but also to a vague, faraway place that we cannot reach.
For me, collecting paints, pigments, and pastels of “ultramarine,” or colors of the sky, the sea, mountains, or between the clouds, is a way to contain their space of longing.
“Ultramarine”… It is the world of the faraway that I wish to reach, beyond the rules of physical time and space.

While it might be merely an abstract notion, the pure mind, which gravitates toward mysticism, opens a path to another dimension, like magic. I sometimes transform from her sea into his sky, and I sometimes drift for ages on her mountain and in between his clouds.

Like falling in love, “ultramarine” sucks me in like a black hole, before dispersing me as minute particles in an infinite space. “Ultramarine” mesmerizes me. The space deepens obscurely and widens endlessly.

In her 2007 work (Drift) – From Her Sea to His Sky, Between Her Mountain and His Cloud, Kim covered the canvas with thick applications of ultramarine pastels, and gave specific instructions to hang the work as high as possible in the gallery, almost reaching the ceiling. From a distance, the work resembled a night sky or a deep sea (i.e., “ultramarine”), but to get a better look, visitors had to either step back or climb a ladder, as depicted in her 2010 drawing (View) – From Her Sea to His Sky, Between Her Mountain and His Cloud. This unique arrangement was intended to create a feeling of immersion for the viewers.

I stand at the endless horizon, observing the waves of the space. I am here, I am there. In time, holes permeate the space, waves sway, thoughts slip.

In her three-dimensional works, such as Surface of Wind, The Song from Beyond (for Wayne), Wave, and Air, Kim stacks thin pieces of transparent PVC cut into the shapes of people’s feet. Collectively piled, the pieces take on a translucent blue color, while assuming the shape of waves or whirlwinds. Thus, the soles of people’s feet, representing movement and migration, are reduced to natural elements. Moreover, these works are easily dismantled and reassembled for each successive exhibition, an ephemeral status that perfectly suits the spirit of Yunsoo Kim’s art.

Each and every moment which,
Even before my knowing,
Comes and goes without fail.
The innocence that has no pause or hesitation,
Every time, with new and surprising wonder,
Seizes me.

One of the works I have been doing from years ago is to collect the footprints of people, cut transparent vinyl that is 0.8mm thick along the area of the sole and pile them up. Through repetition, the clear shape in the beginning becomes increasingly vague and at last disappears. Amidst prolonged labor, the perspective erases differentiation and becomes the scenery of the depth. As the vinyl layers overlap dozens to hundreds of times, the far-away blue abyss is revealed; according to the fine differences in the ways the vinyl layers pile up, the abyss sometimes becomes the wind, sometimes the river, sometimes the mountains, and at times, draws landscapes that look like clouds.

With Voice of Moon (4/3600 Hour) and Wind Restlessly Caresses All the Boundaries of the World, visitors find themselves surrounded by a series of several small works, like waves or air. While these scenes look almost the same, subtle differences are continuously revealed, like the steady pulse of ocean waves or clouds rolling across the sky. Circulating around the audience, the works become the infinite repetition, the endless stream of flow. Like the incessant ebb and flow of the tides, gently pulled by the moon to caress the world’s shores with light, or the glide of clouds and wind quietly crossing all borders and restrictions, Yunsoo Kim’s works evince the softness that ultimately dominates the universe through minute, almost invisible effects.

Artistic Director Jinsang Yoo

‘ Yunsoo Kim delicately depicts natural phenomenon that coexist with people as if refining thoughts for a poem. Voice of Moon(4/3600 hour) visualizes the heaving and growing sound of the waves as the moon gets full. Moonlight reflecting on the sea and the heave of the waves are drawn subsequently for 4 seconds. 30 drawings compose one work as the average moon’s cycle. These are installed to create the forms of becoming a full moon and nature’s song.’

Extracted from exhibition‘Tastes of Weather’

‘The graphite strokes, as if wind blows, arouses synesthesia of wind caressing cheeks and body.’

Extracted from exhibition‘Tastes of Weather’

Wind restlessly caresses all the boundaries of the world.
It draws deserts, draws clouds, envelopes the hills, circles around the riverbanks, sways the forests, caresses the cliffs, hovers over the waves, passes by the endlessly embroidered flower garden, before reaching you.

Since she often travels across borders, drawn by the world’s logic, Yunsoo Kim’s life and work are easy to take down and set up at a moment’s notice, like the homes of nomads. When she converges with life, object connects with spirit. Moving from one place to another, Kim brings ordinary materials into her inner world and creates mental byproducts. Embracing labor-intensive processes, her hands create things, draw pictures, write poems, and ultimately encounter the world of infinity. Situated between absent or scattered beings, the state of infinity infiltrates her reason before entering life as a physical imagination. For Kim, art is the way of documenting her walk through life; it is the scenery her life writes in her soul.

from the review by Kwanhoon Lee (Curator, Project Space SARUBIA)

Yunsoo Kim
b. 1975

Solo Exhibitions
2017	A Walk in Whiteness, Gallery SOSO, Paju
2015	Turn on the Night, ALTER EGO / SUTOME, Seoul
2011	The Bluest Scene, Gallery SOSO, Paju
2008	Ultramarine: Beyond The Sea, Project Space SARUBIA, Seoul
2005	Desert of Winds, Gallery DOS, Seoul
2004	Longing for Innocence, Gallery HYUNDAI Window Gallery, Seoul
2003	Longing for Innocence, Space MOM Museum of Art, Cheongju
2001	Kim Yunsoo Solo Exhibition, Gallery SAGAN, Seoul

Duo Exhibitions
2017	Your Time, My Time, Our Time, Yunsoo Kim & Changhoon Lee, Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation Lobby Gallery, Suwon
2014	Now and Beyond, Yunsoo Kim & Chunghyun No, Gallery NOOK, Seoul

Selected Group Exhibitions
2020	Material and Imagination, Datz Museum of Art, Gwangju
	Collection: Confronting Today’s Questions, Museum of Contemporary Art Busan, Busa
2019	The Accumulated Ghosts, Cheongju Museum of Art, Cheongju
2018	How the Artists Meditate, SAVINA Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul
	Tastes of Weather, Nam Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul
2016	Artist Book Space, Datz Museum of Art, Gwangju
	The Edge of Night, OCI Museum of Art, Seoul
	Being In Nature, Museum SAN, Wonju
2015	SOMA Drawing: Mindful Mindless, SOMA Museum of Art, Seoul
	Black Hole Sun, Art Center White Block, Heyri, Paju
	Salon de SeMA: SeMA’s New Acquisitions 2014, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul
2014	Flow, Datz Museum of Art, Gwangju
2010	The Re-composition of Landscape, Jeju Museum of Art, Jeju
	Alive Gently, POSCO Art Museum, Seoul
	Heteromorphism, Space GONGMYUNG, Seoul
2009	Beginning of New Era, MMCA, Seoul
	Propose 7 – Vol. 4, KUMHO Museum of Art, Seoul
	Fleeting, Museum of Art Seoul National University, Seoul

Residencies
2014–2015	Studio White Block Art Center, Paju
2008–2009	MMCA Goyang Residency, Goyang
2006–2007	Seoul Museum of Art Nangi Residency, Seoul

Collections
Seoul Museum of Art
Museum of Contemporary Art Busan
MMCA Art Bank
OCI Museum of Art
Datz Museum of Art
Art Center White Block
LEESANGWON Museum of Art

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Gallery SoSo

Artwork Inquiry

Reconstruction of Landscape
Chung-Hwan Kho (art critic)

Clear vinyl pads and ultramarine blue are key elements that drive Yunsoo Kim’s work. It would be accurate to say that ultramarine blue conveys the concept of his work and the three-dimensionality represents the process of transferring that concept to a formative structure. Therefore, it is safe to say that different artworks are derived, and variations made, from these two different conceptual axes.

Among different forms of works by the artist, three-dimensional work has comparatively clearer forms and more accessible concepts. The artist uses the foot as a motif, seemingly inspired by her interest in the human body as well as the foot being an analogy for the road we walk in life. In the work, she cuts out the shape of a foot from a clear vinyl pad of even thickness, then places the foot-shaped cutout on another vinyl pad, in which yet another foot shape is cut. As the process proceeds, due to the thickness of the pads, the initial shape of the foot gradually becomes blunt, taking on a streamlined curve. When the vinyl foot-shaped cutouts are stacked on top of another, the first model—that is, the original shape of the foot—reveals itself at the top. Nevertheless, the traces of the footprints constitute the entire form, which therefore can be said to contain the trajectory of all the footprints as if they were a stratum in of themselves. In other words, they are trails of existence, prints left by a being after it passes by retained as traces.

These shapes are formed in such a way as to resemble footprints carved on the seashore or in the desert; like a sandbank formed from waves rushing in and out; a sunken shape left by the passing wind; linear patterns form at the point where the vinyl foot pads overlap, thus creating a layered structure that resembles the landscape contours of mountains, cliffs, whirlwinds or amorphous, kaleidoscopic clouds. In this way, Kim’s works begin with foot-shaped cutouts. Yet, when the foot is moving in all directions, it creates its own analogous scenery, a landscape of consciousness, or of the subconscious.

Although the artist’s work all begin with a foot, they recall the stream of consciousness technique (by writer Marcel Proust), given that the copies of the original foot cutout move in all directions, following the flow of consciousness as they transform in countless forms, and of the concept of formlessness (by writer Georges Bataille), given that there is no predetermined shape. In fact, the technique of stream of consciousness technique or the concept of formlessness is advanced, expanded, and deepened even more indistinctly, more tenuously, more ambiguously, more delicately, more deeply, and more poetically in Kim’s series of drawings—clouds, starlight, moonlight, waves, or in her books rather than in her three-dimensional work.

Ultramarine blue literally means “blue from beyond the sea.” Although there are traces of Orientalism and colonial imperialism indelibly embedded in the word, the artist remains intrigued with the meaning of the color. As a result, she has indiscriminately collected blue objects from beyond the sea, including pigments, clay as picture material, and objects. Then she paints, draws, and creates objects in blue from beyond the sea, depicting the sky, clouds, starlight, and dead quiet. Even her three-dimensional vinyl footpad installations are reminiscent of a transparent and deep blue. Would it be accurate to call her a voluntary enthusiast for the blue that is only found beyond the sea?

Meanwhile, regarding the objects from beyond the sea, Romanticism and metaphysics are also part of them. There are appendants of metaphysics that include the place from which beings come from and return to, death and afterlife, and spirituality and sublimity. The artist draws and creates these appendants. Beyond the sea are words that have yet to be written, words that belong to elements that have yet to be assigned, words that refuse to be signified, and words that are forcefully signified but whose meanings are distorted. Therefore, the vague, ambiguous, delicate, deep, and poetic words that are likely gleaned from beyond the sea are reconfigured in these works. In this sense, it is fitting to say that Kim’s process is a kind of plotting that matches signification (nothing outside meaning) and conceptualization (everything is replaced by concepts). That is, the artist is painting lines of flight from different desires. It is also safe to say that the artist is moving beyond the laws of space and time through her paintings, drawings, photos, objects, installations and their by products, scrolls, and painterly structures of folding screens, moving instantly to where space (and even time) is far away, deepening and ever-widening.

The artist’s latest works that depict humming (to sing a tune alone or murmuring to oneself) are poetic. In comparison with the predictable narratives found in novels, the space between a line is relatively broad. Therefore, it is safe to say that Kim’s work has structure and physiology that are non-deterministic, changeable, reversible. Although there are artworks with a self-contained structure, these works have an open-ended structure in which meaning is contingent upon what meets what and how it is placed. In semantics, a semantic body in isolation does not guarantee meaning, rather circumstantial logic creates meaning. It is not until a painting or an object is placed under a given circumstance that meaning occurs. Therefore, an object’s meaning changes when the situation changes. In this sense, rendering or directing (which includes conceptual and spatial directing) in a situational work should in fact be viewed as an alternative name for creation.

In this regard, it is possible to say that Yunsoo Kim stages concepts and space, thereby reconstructing a landscape. That is how the artist opens landscapes that look like a collection of poems. Not to mention the novel idea of a teleportable folding landscape (or a portable landscape, if the imagination is exercised).