Exhibition Review

Artforum October.



Travis Jeppesen



Kim titled one of his monographs Eliminate Points, Lines, and Planes(2014). That would be a bold commandment for any artist, but for one who works in the traditional media of sculpture and drawing, it reveals a truth so wise that very few ever grasp it, and those who do can rarely accept it: that to align yourself with the impossible is the only position worth considering.

Much of Kim’s work has taken form of sculpture, but it has often been fed by drawing. He selects drawings to be turned into three dimensional objects, and then as often as not draws upon those objects. the resulting works shatter the confines of dimensionality, of perceptive limits. Attraction thrashes against figuration and, within that figuration, between the human and animal( in those instances where we’re not one and the same).

Kim’s latest exhibition, consisting of just six works,is a spatial concert of thematic irruptions. One was in to be confronted by ’Things modelled on 2’,2019, consisting of two sculptures of legs in white resin, positioned across the room at weird angles from one another: a split person. One is elevated on a round black table, the other on a black wooden box. The perfectly sculpted legs culminate at the top in ribbons of fleshy sludge yearning to coalesce into anatomical correctness—though if they would hardly be worth contemplating.

The sculptures are surrounded by three large pencil drawings, all titled ‘Backside’. (one is dated 2019: two are dated 2018.) Each carries a series of vertical lines, with one long forming the centre. My favorite of the three looks from afar like an accumulation of gray dust.

Seen up close, more detail emerges: The drawings are just repetitive slashings, but toward either side, these marks are longer and more spaced out; as they move toward the center they grow slimmer(less spaced) and  shorter in length, also darker, ultimately forming a big curved line going down the middle.

A fourth work titled ‘Backside’, 2018, is encountered in the gallery’s second room. surprise! It’s a sculpture rather than a drawing, just a thin metal line, resin coated on wooden plinth, with the barest inference of a leg and foot. Its shadow extends its presence onto the floor and wall behind it.

The Backside sculpture is triangulated with five-part sculptural work whose title commands us simply to ‘Count’,2017. These heads forgo plights to hang from the ceiling. Did  they once belong to those legs in the other room? No. These works suggest other bodies, other places, other creatures; one is a big bird’s head, its elongated beak pointing directly to blank space between two circular orbs that culminate in distended udders drooping toward the floor. Beneath those droopy udders stand two minuscule feet—as though broken off toy figurine.

Space is the place we invade in order to learn something. Or to unlearn, if we know too much already. What good are all these goings and comings if not to get more presence?