MINOUK LIM

Lim’s practice, encompassing a wide range of media and modes of expression, is distinguished by a provocative fusion of the poetic and the political, the theatrical and the documentarian. Typically combining video, sculpture, and assemblage of found objects, the immersive installations for which she is best known constitute a kind of mis-en-scène, sites of conceptual evocation of the specters of history, the psychic scars of the Cold-War ideological divide and the convulsive emergence of Korea as a modern state.

Lim’s exploration of her themes takes an expansive turn in the present exhibition, opening out beyond the parameters of specific locale and time onto more abstract, symbolic dimensions of myths, rituals, and totems both timeless and contemporary. The works in Memento Moiré synthesize an array of ideas and visual elements that have long permeated her oeuvre: cosmology, mystical and spiritual iconography, vestiges of nature and the detritus of civilization. Deploying diverse materials, including paint, urethane, and fabric, as well as terra cotta powder, cuttlefish bones, and castoff objects of modern life, she has created several new series of wall-based works that alternate between abstraction, allegory, and unmediated representation of material reality.