Viewing the Front Page Artwork of the Newsletter (5) The Lightness of Being III, by artist Juyeon KIM
2016-05-23 l Hit 1148
Viewing the Front Page Artwork of the Newsletter
(5) The Lightness of Being III, by artist Juyeon KIM
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The artist Juyeon KIM, who is well known for sprouting plant seeds in objects, recently focused on creating a series of work called «The Lightness of Being»; The work shows sprouting seeds on ‘clothes’. The front page artwork of the Korean Artist Project newsletter this time is «The Lightness of Being III» (2015); photographed image of the installation work: red sweater sprouting buds.
The work is from the series «The Lightness of Being» made in 2014 and the artist used clothes that she wore before; She chose clothes from her childhood, adulthood, and from her memories. She planted seeds and sprouted them and then took pictures of the work.
The artist Juyeon Kim focused on creating huge installation work for a while. In the work «Library»(2009), she used 1,800 books. The supersized work «Metamorphosis»(2009) consisted of stacked up newspapers with sprouted seeds on them and it weighed 3 ~ 4 tons. While the artist was feeling sorry that these huge installations were dissipated and do not exist anymore, she received an exhibition request from a gallery in Japan. She mentioned that she had been wondering about a way to show her work without it being dismantled, and came up with the idea of photographing her installation work and exhibiting the images.
Actually, photography was a familiar medium to the artist. She has always taken pictures of her work as a record. She began her photography in earnest in 2011 when she went to the South Pole in the summer. She had to create work without damaging the nature of the South Pole and delivering the output to Korea was also a problem. Therefore, she chose photography as her medium. Her previous photography focused on recording her work as a document, but its characteristics changed after the South Pole and became her primary medium as it is in now.
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Her experience in the South Pole became an opportunity for artist KIM to shift her work direction: not only her genre, but also her theme. One summer night in the South Pole, where the sun never sets, she woke up, worked by herself, and saw a huge iceberg shift suddenly. She then realized how delicate and light humans are, just like a piece of string in the vastness of nature, and started to think about the lightness of being.
After that, she focused on creating the series «The Lightness of Being», using clothes to symbolize human skin and even the human itself. By the way, what prompted the artist to work with sprouting ‘seeds’?
After that, she focused on creating the series «The Lightness of Being», using clothes to symbolize human skin and even the human itself. By the way, what prompted the artist to work with sprouting ‘seeds’?
When the artist was studying in Germany, a professor asked her about ‘Yin and Yang philosophy’. She couldn’t answer the questions properly and felt sorry about the experience and then started to read all sorts of books regarding Eastern philosophy. Along the way, she found the concept ‘Yisook(異熟)’, which means the whole process of everything that comes to life and grows in the universe. After she encountered this concept, she realized that she wanted to work with it. In those days, the artist was fascinated by yoga and breathing exercises, and became a vegetarian to train herself. She was consciously or unconsciously affected by the changes that those practices created in her body and by the vegetables she grew on her balcony and ate, and then started to create work with sprouting ‘seeds’.
Meanwhile, she will finish the series «The Lightness of Being» during the second half of next year and exhibit the series with both the installation work and photographs.
2016. 5. 27 ⓒKorean Artist Project
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