KIM HongSeok

The Momental Debris

We live along the system of sensual environment. The time we open our eyes and ears, both analysis and proofing have been essential terms for our survivals. The milieu of art world under the tsunami of paradigms is not far from those above. Still, there are few artist standing aside the perspective or values of this world yet. Kim Hong-seok, who do not care of the custom to call the higher bid with joining to material and plasticism in the text of contemporary sculpture, is one of them.

He is reconstructing his text from the pose of a model to a theatrical misancene. Likewise the stone itself to be transfiguration of unmeasurable time, heat and pressure, his text and compositions also have been exchanged with the blurred scene of memories, the short comments of life. Those contents that he has carved into stone; the fragments of human body almost palpable in flesh and blood; white sparkling waves and the paradoxical nostalgia in that playful fragilities; a sheet of crushed and tossed paper keeping a secret story; are all the signatures of times sorted with black and white monograph with tags of one’s other self, you and us.

The outcome of tedious repetitive carving, grinding and cropping out looks a lot like the very hard labor of alluvial mining for a seed of gold as the symbol of eternity in the barren desert of parched moments. The marble that he casted the layers of gesture so diligently to resemble fair skin are summoning us the nostalgic emotions. If not in stone, his work might be a something similar to a few lines of corpus for his own written down in the blank corner of a note so called everyday life. However, it would be hard to find a decent spoken or written interpretation to his work, at least in this review, if only to think the fact that a language is not a clone for the object but a mere substitute.

In result, Kim’s work stands there as a time-capsule holding the viewers own stories like briefly captured but strongly resonancing memos, a piece of mirage in white marble. The condolence of life for those passing us by and gone is the rite of passage in the most priority. To speak the truth, the phenomenology of tiny matters in life such as tacit fragment of human figure and the bubbles of vain in the nature is not the essence of what his work bears. In other perspective, not likely the digital media in contemporary art controlled variously by the myriads of operations, the materialism of stone is the alpha and the omega at the same time. However, there is no reason to figure his work as a Mausoleum of digital era in context with the portrait of private memorandum. On the contrary, Kim’s work is closer to tabula rasa, the zero point of our cognition, in that they are still remained in pre-dedicated anonymities.

It is a sense we have missed so much and strange as well for us who had been long not allowed to stand on the innocent ground in the fear of the relentless living that the mystery of his figure embodying and the piece of freely waving seaside in carved stones. It would be not so bad to observe the cross point of reality and memories in endless shifting beyond the casual life from the momental debris so much like the paradox that hard stone is transformed into a sheet of crunched paper. Why not a newborn is an exuviation of dream in the reflection of mirror to the past towarding reality, the very opening your eyes once in a while. In the shade of Kim’s islet, there, I

wish you would meet again the inapproachable but wandered memories of yesterday, today and tomorrow sometime.

SEO WON YOUNG | Independent curator

 

 

 

KIM HongSeok
Born in    1972, Seoul, Korea

EDUCATION
2008    M.F.A, Sculpture, College of Fine Arts, Seoul National University
2000    B.F.A, Sculpture, College of Fine Arts, Seoul National University

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITION
2013    Walking in the Air, Kimchongyung Museum, Seoul, Korea
2008    The Life, INSA Art Center, Seoul, Korea

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITION
2014    International Sculpture Festa 2014, Seoul Arts Center, Seoul, Korea
2013    International Sculpture Festa 2013, Seoul Arts Center, Seoul, Korea
Seoul Sculptors Society, The Independence Hall, Cheonan , Korea
2012    VAULT 2012, Hadae-ri artPlANarea, Hoeng, Korea
International Sculpture Festa 2012, Seoul Arts Center, Seoul, Korea
Seoul Sculptors Society, Moran Museum, Namyangju , Korea
2010    VAULT project 2010, Hadae-ri artPlANarea, Hoeng, Korea
2009    ART+HIVE QuARTerS project 2009, Hadae-ri artPlANarea, Hoeng, Korea