KIM SOUN-GUI

Soun-Gui KIM researches semiology and philosophy aesthetics and worked as an artist in France from 1971, where her works reflect on Eastern and Western philosophies. Soun-Gui KIM applies her artistic perspective based on Eastern philosophy such as emptiness and openness, into Western society and culture, exploring new directions on contemporary art. The simplest and most primitive is explored where images arise from nature’s autonomous workings. This exhibition presents a selection of KIM’s ‘foolish photography’ which reflects on these thoughts. Soun-Gui KIM’s ‘foolish photography’ series consists of natural images created by a pinhole camera where light is exposed in extended time and images are made as analogue prints of the 1990s. As subjects are taken in the most natural way using time and light, these photographs are characterised by distinctive blurry and dreamy images. ‘Foolish photography’ contain the natural aspects of what we see in our dailyl ives captured in its raw state according to the uncalculated time and light exposure which also shows the artist’s own unique perception.

This exhibition showcases her new multimedia work that is a reinterpretation of her previous video work of the 1990s but much expanded in concept. In 1982, Soun-Gui KIM went backpacking to various countries of the world, exploring the culture and arts of the East and the West. While in New York, she associated with video artists such as Nam June PAIK, Ko NAKAJIMA, Ira SCHNEIDER and Frank GILLETTE and presented multimedia works combining objet and video. Soun-Gui KIM’s new work Stock Garden – Temple (2023) is a multimedia installation with sound and video where numbers of the stock market display board and the sound of the bell tolling at dawn at Silsangsa with the video is installed. The 33 tolling of the bells reflect Buddhist philosophy of the universe and signifies openness and absolute time in Eastern philosophy. The sound of meditation and capitalist stock market numbers get mixed up with each other, maximising the inner selves of people living in modern society dependent on the capitalist values of the intangible world. KIM’s Stock Exchange work was shown for the first time in 1999 in France, and afterwards the multimedia installation has been reconstructed each time at different presentations. Another version of Stock Garden has been presented at the most recent exhibition at 59th Carnegie International, 2023.

Another new work presented in this exhibition is Téléphone Arabe, an installation work of KIM where the inspiration of the work derives from the works from the 1980s that deals with this theme of communication. But this time the work is reinterpreted and expanded. Since the late 1980s KIM has focused on works tackling the theme on the expansion of global capital through internet communication and the changes seen in social structure. Especially seeing how the Iraq War with the US has affected people’s values, she expresses her critical views on civilisation where capital takes precedence over all other values. With the Iraq War, which created a situation where the world believed only news coming from the US, further interest has been developed in distorted communication and the media and these concerns can be seen in a number of drawings that has been carried out between 1987 and 1992. The large installation work Téléphone Arabe (2023) that stands in the exhibition space is a new interpretation that has been inspired from these drawings and through this newly realised installation work, KIM tries to point out the nature of constantly distorted communication. By returning to the most primitive communication of connecting cans with a string and the transmission of sound, it makes us think again about the nature of conflict and sound that is caused by distorted communication that often occurs in the modern society we live in as well as in different cultures.

Soun-Gui KIM was born in 1946 in Buyeo and graduated from the Department of Painting at Seoul National University. In 1971 she was invited by Centre Artistique deRencontre International in Nice to come and work in France. Whilst in France she studied Semiology and Philosophy aesthetics at I’Univeristé Nice-Sophia-Antipolis inNice and l’Université d’Aix en Provence. While working as artist in France, she has taught at É cole Nationale d’Art Décoratif de Nice, the É cole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Marseille, and the É cole Nationale Supérieure d’Art de Dijon. Her works have been presented in a number of solo exhibitions held in ARARIO GALLERY Seoul(2018), ARARIO MUSEUM in SPACE (2016), Art Sonje Center (2014), Slought Foundation (2013), Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nice (1991). Since the most recent retrospective solo exhibition Lazy Clouds (2019) held at The NationalMuseum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Korea, which showed her works from the end of the 1960s until recent works, her works have been shown at ZKM Center forArt and Media Karlsruhe in Germany (2022) and was invited to participate at the 58th Carnegie International in Pittsburg, USA. She will also present her works in GwangjuBiennale, Korea (2023).