Kim Seung-young Exhibiton


As a recipient of an award for the three dimensional installationsection in 1997 at the Gongsan Art Festival, Kim Seung-young was invited to hold a solo show. Unlike his other exhibitions where he would explore the nature, civilization and the corporeality surrounding him, Kim chose to shed light on the men around him in minute detail. Covered entirely with white, Kim’s canvases show vague traces of men. In this exhibition the artist showcases the weight of man he feels through the weight of work in a succinct form.



He presents TheRoomofMemoryrepresenting each figure’s diverse experiences and an accumulation of their everyday traces;The Door of Memoryusingcanvasinthe size of his studio’s door as a passage, and in which those who settle in their memories is expressed in a heap of canvases; and the video piece drawing the space for memories down to a realistic space. Blue halogen lights wrapping an entire space induce viewers to the space of his memoriesby illuminating even the room installed with videos themselves with the same brightness.

In the video, an image of a male appears in fixed contours on a white background.He flops down, escaping from the lines gradually. Another image appears within the contours, and white is applied to this image. The first male image repeats the same action, and then another image appears again. The artist applies white or deletes parts within the same action. Kim Seung-young is the man himself who is disappointed at a typical reality. Human relations still occur even in this reality. Kim wishes that those who he met in his life are left in the passages of time objectively,whether good or bad.

Traces of paint applied to horizontally set canvases are marks of his memories, implying the flow of time. Kim’s two-dimensional installation can be thought of as the signs of reality, though not as any pictorial signs. Laid canvases push and pull one another in TheRoomofMemory.If a canvas is seen as a dot, its accumulation forms lines and planes. These planes denote all human relations in the world with most of the composition remaining full of tension, shaping a mass with its traces of paint. Kim presents such human relations in conceptual visual language, without elucidating the meaning of painting itself.


By Kim Mi-jin / Art Critic