Suyeon Kim(GALLERY2)
Suyeon Kim recreates things that once existed across the two-dimensional and three-dimensional or real and imaginary domains, what exists but is not visible, and thus things that we want to see.
Suyeon Kim (b.1986) works with illustrated bird and plant guidebooks, encyclopedias, and obscene picture books. She collects images and makes prints of them to build three-dimensional objects. Kim’s three-dimensional objects are drawings and objects at the same time. There is no set building method, as she changes the way she works depending on the images. Her recent work is based on the theme of chunhwa (春畵, literally “spring pictures,” but obscene pictures, by definition). She started the work from the question, ‘what would I paint if I were a chunhwa painter?’ By using ornamental flower arrangements and sculptures that remind us of classical beauty, Kim attempts to portray the great fondness between lovers who also seek momentary pleasure. In the final work, there are different perspectives, directions of light, and traces left by original images, which imply that every object in the final image once existed in a different time and space.
Suyeon Kim’s solo exhibition Today’s Weather takes place at P21, from July 8 to August 6, 2022. Weather has long been a subject of interest and exploration for Kim. In Today’s Weather, she presents works that expand her Weather series to the relationship between data and tool-tips, which are the tips of her painting tools that touch the surface of the canvas. In her last exhibition Hold Me (2021, Gallery2), Kim showcased works created by collecting experiences of various weather and climate phenomena, such as rain, wind, rainbow, and sleet in the form of images, and then substituting them with certain objects. Recreating a scene by substituting images with tangible objects, and then transferring it to the canvas is a process and practice that runs through most of Kim’s works. She has been securing a certain amount of distance and time between her works and herself and reflecting her experiences and fleeting images emerging from that in-between space on her canvas.
Meanwhile, interpretation of images and subjectivity of production in Kim’s methodology have always been subjects of doubt. Some distance was secured between the artist and her art subject with the idea that she makes and draws “models” (reconstruction of scenes), but the question of whether her work goes beyond reproduction and explores painting itself always followed. In Today’s Weather, she takes this matter into her hands by resetting the relationship between data and tool. To Kim, “data” was a list of memorable scenes and the order of records, while tools such as paintbrush, pen, and oil stick were means to realize her intentions in painting up until now. However, she takes a different approach in this exhibition, as seen in the new Wind series, by combining data and tool to create a setting that can produce images on its own. This is also an assessment of the necessity of the way images are made in the “model” stage.
Wind is the movement of air caused by differences in atmospheric pressure. Atmospheric pressure is the density of air, which changes depending on the surface temperature or water surface temperature. Kim prepared a special device that records the movement of wind caused by this difference in temperature and collected data. She tied a painting tool, such as a paintbrush or pen, to a string, which swayed like a pendulum and “collected” wind like a pendulum on a seismometer that records vibrations. The traces of the brush or pen tips left on the notebook resemble vector data graphs that show direction and magnitude. Graphs are combinations of data and visual elements such as points and lines; likewise, Kim collected the vector data of “the movement of wind” and visualized “today’s weather” using a tool that matches well with the weather that day. In other words, she changed out the tool-tip every day and gave variations to form.
The models she created for her paintings thus far have now been integrated into accumulated data of time and movement. The X and Y axes’ plane movement and the change in energy that works on the Z-axis left either sharp or thick traces of strokes, and Kim faithfully recreates this, thereby exploring the form of paintings that vary depending on the tool that is used. Here, she understood weather as a phenomenon caused by energy, and connected personal experiences and emotions to the object that channels and embodies that weather. Various images and landscapes presented in Today’s Weather are the traces of energy recorded “today” and the objects of emotions that travel along that path.