Kim is a key figure of his generation in South Korea, his ideas based in the shift created when image-making moves from language to physical form. His works challenge conventional ideas that are considered as social norms through fictional images using various mediums such as drawing, video, painting, installation.
The artist subverts the meanings of the objects that we see everyday lives. Pregnant Hammer, which is a hammer with bulging handle and Radio Shaped Iron, Iron Shaped Radio, that switched both shapes, etc. they are either personified objects and/or are the subversion of the essence of the objects. If one can say that classical way of representation takes concretizing an impression into a form, Kim Beom’s way discards was of representation and suggests to see alternative reality through memory and experience of the audience.
Born in 1963, Seoul, Kim Beom attended Seoul National University during South Korea's student democratization movement and obtained both a BFA and an MFA there in 1988 and 1986. He then moved to New York City where he completed a second MFA at the School of Visual Arts in 1991. He remained in New York until returning to South Korea in 1997.
Kim's work is included in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Cleveland Museum of Art; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis in the United States; the Museum für Kommunikation, in Bern, Switzerland; and the Seoul Museum of Art, the Ho-Am Art Museum, Artsonje Center, and the Horim Museum, in Seoul, and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, in Gwachun, Korea.
