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Inbai Kim’s works have involved variations of the human body in a wide range of ways. Even still, they are not meant to represent inner emotions or psychological states; they are intended to explore how a subject perceives and recognizes an object before one’s eyes. To achieve this, Kim has concerned himself with how to install his pieces in venues. The method he uses usually results in well-constructed stage settings as if he were structurally forming an antithesis. Recognizable in his work and exhibition method is the fact that any visual illustration to perceive objects soon comes up against a limitation because it depends on conventions such as learned experience and knowledge. As a result, this work configuration arouses some confusion in its preexisting way of perception and signals the artist’s intent to bring about a normal yet unstable situation through a distributed arrangement. Each work he displays in this way occupies its own arena but they soon scatter instead of coming together at a single point since they are organically associated with one another. This association is not a passageway by which one can reach a conclusion with purposiveness; rather, it leads us to a labyrinth. In this way, Kim’s work continues to show an interest in what and how we perceive through the sense of sight. His previous exhibition titled Eliminates Points, Lines, and Planes (2014) revealed a multilayered gaze in which “I” as a subject sees an object through a relative distance between “I” and the object instead of perceiving it through dots, lines, and planes, elemental units humans have set up predicated upon their own visual concepts. The exhibition that was staged at the same time not only integrated senses but also divided gazes. This exhibition titled Do You Remember Love¹ is an extension of this aspect.

Do You Remember Love originated from his study of linear forms which he demonstrated in his recent works Backside, The Side of a Side, and The Three Quarter Profile of a Profile. Backside is a drawing of the same title that consists of images rendered by lines and blank spaces. This work calls to mind the human body with its title. When using drawings or materials which give prominence to planes in works such as The Side of a Side and The Three Quarter Profile of a Profile, our perception of the body becomes ambiguous in accordance with the position from which we view it. In addition, our way of perceiving each work is also influenced by this position since the works are based on one another. Adding to this, in Untouched Side Kim takes a cross section of a lotus root as an elemental form and stacks its pieces to recreate its shape. The final form that results from this is individual yet not independent as a product that continues part of the original form. Although the holes characteristic of a lotus root exist in the form, viewers cannot help but picture them in their minds. In this way, he has concentrated consistently on sensing and perceiving an object through his study of the simplest form, that of the “line”. Let us now review his works that are on show at the exhibition. Line That Wants to Be a Line stands vertically on the floor while Play within the Play is placed horizontally on the wall. Both works appear loose without tension. The two works are static while revealing their own directivity, forming an antithesis between the vertical and horizontal on the wall and the horizontal and vertical on the floor. A line is drawn on top of another in Line That Wants to Be a Line and a line is broken up and enlarged in Play within the Play. Kim brings about a number of variables that divide or overlap one another by dividing, joining, reducing, or expanding lines. Constant Distance is a reduction of Triptych: Size, Movement, Count which was shot at various angles and 3D printed. If a viewer holds this mass in his or her hand, it becomes as close to this work as possible. Also visible in the venue is another mass with a similar form that keeps its distance from the eye. What I hold in my hand is not the same as what I see with my eyes in terms of size, while what I feel with my hands is often confused with what I see with my eyes. In Drawing Made from a Distance, lines are drawn within the proportion of an IMAX screen with a pencil connected to a long aluminum bar which seems likely to bend. Lines rendered in this way cannot help but be regulated by his intentional acts while displaying unrestricted movements, departing from complete control due to physical distance from him. Another drawing titled The Largest is illustrated on a piece of paper in proportion to a smaller IMAX screen. Lines are rendered as if brushing past the border of the paper, but they are obviously made within the paper while showing spatiality and movement to break away from the domain of the paper. As can be seen, his works form an antithesis. Let us return our attention to the entire fabric of the exhibition. The concept of lines adopted in this exhibition is both simple and complicated. In his works, a line is regarded as a thin element that exists independently but cannot be perceived as a single form due to a complicated overlapping of lines, forging a comprehensive relationship. All of the lines demonstrate a horizontal relationship due to their morphological similarities while stressing the differences of thickness, texture, height and size. In addition, the lines he uses enable us to perceive not only lines with a physical substance but also intangible lines that are temporarily revealed through “my” gaze. An immediate response is brought about through the audience’s gaze toward his works. In addition, the line he uses appears to expand or reduce owing to changes in the distance between an observer and the object. Accordingly, each work in the venue seems stable as if set in a certain space and time, but they are simply placed without any fixed, perceptual coordinates. This leads the audience to naturally perceive a variety of senses, untrammeled by any specific direction that relies only on a sense of sight.

In this exhibition Kim has no intention of drawing a dichotomous distinction of objects between a visual entity and an internal concept. He pays heed to a temporary, complicated relationship between the continuously circulating subject and object. The apparent body form in his previous works is converted into a surface consisting of simple lines so that the original visual structure through which we generally perceive the object is either blurred or dispersed by him. This distinction, however, is not completely erased, yet the disparate forms and structures he depicts with lines, the thinnest of units, becomes a tipping point for viewers to perceive an object in a new way. The lines he uses are not only well-defined boundaries to distinguish forms, they are also objects with movement that put different forms closely together and temporarily repeat a process of overlapping and separation. For instance, Line That Wants to Be a Line sets a single line apart from a constellation of lines, thereby generating a connection of gazes with the viewer’s movements, the distance from an object, and their morphological similarities. Lines rendered on a line are separated into another line with its own identity and overlap, thereby demonstrating physical motility moving at an identical velocity. This is similar to a sense generated by my eyes combined with other new eyes. The state in which this is possible appears as a way to sense things that are obviously undistinguishable to humans, as if adding _re to _re or water to water. The structure Kim creates forges a network in which loose, slow alterations are involved with one another through arched or bent objects and changes in strength, distance, and length caused by overlapped actions and lines. It delays what becomes clear and reveals its void in order to sense differences in specific objects and change through this. The way in which the artist uses lines does not have a special meaning; it is intended to bring about a situation in which the subject is closely bound up with the object. The intent he contains in this exhibition may bring us some meaning, but as we have already known, every sight we see does not bring us any meaning. That’s because he does not make his own passageway in one direction. He tries to make his works serve as an opportunity for viewers to perceive new senses rather than keeping a distance from their sight or sharing meanings as similar as possible to what he has presented. This concept is eloquently represented by the distance between the audience and his works such as Constant Distance and Triptych: Size, Movement, Count. These two pieces allow that which is in the viewer’s hand and that which is before one’s eyes to coexist. The audience is not regulated or separated by the artist but is asked to forge the part and the whole and to have an autonomous movement to become another thing between the work they are in close contact with and the work they view from a distance. These works enable us to temporarily perceive the senses hidden behind the characters a host of objects have. Both a liberal spirit to get rid of the conventional methods we use to perceive something and pure concentration using all of our senses are required to uncover the artist’s intention. We have to perceive the objects before our eyes individually and sense them comprehensively.

In conclusion, Kim uses both reciprocal and invisible lines that are substantial in accordance to the locations of the artist, viewer, and artwork. These lines change in their own locations due to the distance between the audience and the artwork, signaling a horizontal multi-relationship in which they perceive one another through similarities and differences. They also move while overlapped, connected, or separated from one another. Kim views the object of a line as simply existing there, and it does not have any meaning according to the subject’s directivity. As a result, he shows how an object unmasked by “me” is always likely to change. Thus, “I” who sees the object of a “line” can be associated with the artwork as a subjective being or not. In contrast, an artwork also exists as a freestanding subject regardless of “me”, viewing each other or all seeing “me”. The exhibition Do You Remember Love moves constantly, matching his speed without fixing the relationship between the subject of “I” and the object of an artwork, the surface of what is existent in itself, and the world that exists beyond it. In this exhibition, Kim creates a forum in which he perceives a multi-layered reality that is revealed when he, the subject, and the objects are in a cycle of creation and extinction, going beyond a fragmentary state.