Artist Statement:
Sookyung Kim is a multi-disciplinary artist who visualizes the inner workings of the human psyche by extending abstract expressions through the freeform style of East Asian painting.
She visually expresses the essence of fragmented human memory in modern society, creating abstract and metaphorical visual poetry.Her work, based in the body and moving through space, delves into the depths of human awareness. The space persists in her work as an absolute and intellectual space, continuing to exist even after all items have been removed. Navigating both two-dimensional and three-dimensional spaces, the exploration involves a holistic contemplation of women's lives, a confrontation with the autonomy of the individual, and an exploration of the essence of human nature. Furthermore, it investigates ways to continuously break down and narrow the boundaries between the Eastern and the Western approaches to fine art.
As in Gilles Deleuze’s characterisation of human ontology in “Body without Organs”, “body” is a concept of unrestricted entity to be reconstructed, free from the state of social connections, standardisation, symbolisation, and subjectivisation. Oriental painting and the body are my work in that they are “the notion of constructing an instantaneous state by attempting to be free from conventional images of the subject”. As a free-spirited organism, it represents individuality.
We can't have everything we want in life, but we still have to exist as independent humans. In Korean society, which is deeply based in Confucian culture, where gender disparity is portrayed in the notion of 'men are high and women are low,' and women live as social minority. I was confined within the traditional Confucian ideology of Korea, labeled as a "first daughter and a woman." The social norms that define the position of a "first daughter and a woman" emphasise putting the well-being of the household before one's own life. All social conventions have been formed by the body, which serves as a frame for me. To break free from these fixed images, images are layered and overlaid to transcend them.
The working method involves utilizing the format of a fairy tale, employing abstract expressions and the absence of a fixed structure. At the same time, it illuminates the darker sides of reality. The stories of my fairy tales are conveyed through various mediums. Leveraging the non-fixed character of fairy tales, I expand from text, drawing, and 3D pictures to moving images, stop-motion animation, performances, and digital collages. I evoke a feeling of strangeness and surrealism by presenting three-dimensional spaces within two-dimensional spaces. I erase the existence of conventional objects while simultaneously liberating the notions associated with them, throwing them into an infinite field of possibilities.
Art embodies the sociability of the era and the interplay of human spirits. Proclamation of 'individualization' is a cry for women's emancipation from the absurdity of conventional Confucian rules. Beyond the confines of the medium, an endeavour is made to question the established conventions of modern art, branching out from traditional forms to investigate.
Sookyung Kim is a multi-disciplinary artist who visualizes the inner workings of the human psyche by extending abstract expressions through the freeform style of East Asian painting.
She visually expresses the essence of fragmented human memory in modern society, creating abstract and metaphorical visual poetry.Her work, based in the body and moving through space, delves into the depths of human awareness. The space persists in her work as an absolute and intellectual space, continuing to exist even after all items have been removed. Navigating both two-dimensional and three-dimensional spaces, the exploration involves a holistic contemplation of women's lives, a confrontation with the autonomy of the individual, and an exploration of the essence of human nature. Furthermore, it investigates ways to continuously break down and narrow the boundaries between the Eastern and the Western approaches to fine art.
As in Gilles Deleuze’s characterisation of human ontology in “Body without Organs”, “body” is a concept of unrestricted entity to be reconstructed, free from the state of social connections, standardisation, symbolisation, and subjectivisation. Oriental painting and the body are my work in that they are “the notion of constructing an instantaneous state by attempting to be free from conventional images of the subject”. As a free-spirited organism, it represents individuality.
We can't have everything we want in life, but we still have to exist as independent humans. In Korean society, which is deeply based in Confucian culture, where gender disparity is portrayed in the notion of 'men are high and women are low,' and women live as social minority. I was confined within the traditional Confucian ideology of Korea, labeled as a "first daughter and a woman." The social norms that define the position of a "first daughter and a woman" emphasise putting the well-being of the household before one's own life. All social conventions have been formed by the body, which serves as a frame for me. To break free from these fixed images, images are layered and overlaid to transcend them.
The working method involves utilizing the format of a fairy tale, employing abstract expressions and the absence of a fixed structure. At the same time, it illuminates the darker sides of reality. The stories of my fairy tales are conveyed through various mediums. Leveraging the non-fixed character of fairy tales, I expand from text, drawing, and 3D pictures to moving images, stop-motion animation, performances, and digital collages. I evoke a feeling of strangeness and surrealism by presenting three-dimensional spaces within two-dimensional spaces. I erase the existence of conventional objects while simultaneously liberating the notions associated with them, throwing them into an infinite field of possibilities.
Art embodies the sociability of the era and the interplay of human spirits. Proclamation of 'individualization' is a cry for women's emancipation from the absurdity of conventional Confucian rules. Beyond the confines of the medium, an endeavour is made to question the established conventions of modern art, branching out from traditional forms to investigate.