Kimsooja

The project “BIENALSUR, KIMSOOJA BUENOS AIRES” describes a cycle of exhibits created by this Korean artist at different sites throughout the city: MUNTREF Centro de Arte Contemporáneo [Contemporary Art Center] at the Hotel de Inmigrantes location, Centro Cultural Coreano en Argentina [The Argentine Korean Cultural Center], Museo Nacional de Arte Decorativo [National Musuem of Decorative Arts]; we invite viewers to visit all of these locations.

About “Kimsooja. Nomad”

Her work moves fluidly between space and time in search of understanding or facing/ inserting/embedding itself within a variety of realities. Kimsooja defines herself as nomad. To watch serenely from the midst of a crowd gives her the possibility to “feel empathy for humanity” while also allowing her to “capture the essence of human reality’s ephemeral nature.” The bottari are omnipresent in this series of photographs of performances and in the objects displayed in the exhibit. Each one of them represents a condensed version of the world, a world that is singular, intimate, closed or sheltered—in some way—by a blanket that simultaneously envelops, protects and hides a collection of necessary objects through which the notion of “need” can be redefined by the encounter between these same objects and their interplay with the onlooker’s imagination. Time and space mix and meld in her work. Space is porous and filled with multiple layers that both obscure and reveal. Time is presented as an existential condition, but it also slows down and is redefined through artistic prerogative as an invitation to intimacy. 

Diana B. Wechsler, curator