SORA KIM
Jul 11, 2007 - Aug 26, 2007
K1 Seoul


INTRODUCTION

Sora Kim is one of the Korean artists who has been actively involved and has enthusiastically participated in the international stage for the last 10 years, promoting and representing Korean contemporary art. She has been invited to numerous international biennales such as the Venice biennale in 2003 and 2005, the International Triennale of Contemporary Art, Yokohama in 2005 and the Busan biennale in 2006 and to prominent overseas exhibitions such as the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, U.K in 2007 and Espai d'Art Contemporani de Castelló in Spain but this is her first domestic solo exhibition. For this meaningful exhibition, she is presenting new works in line to her unique installations.
Sora Kim composes sensuous and refine images by transforming the shapes derived or borrowed from everyday lives through wonderful poetic associations. Showing familiarity on one hand but expressing hardboiled narrative on the other, her works are well known for emphasizing the importance of audiences during production and process of the exhibition.

In this exhibition, Sora Kim narrates on her viewpoints of the world we live in by reinterpreting the famous fairy tale, 'Hansel & Gretel'. 'Hansel & Gretel' is on the prolonged line of descriptions the artist dealt with such as in < ANTARCTICA > and < Melting Alaska > and at the same time full of more internal and mysterious forms.
Through the re-writing process which reminds that of Paul Auster and David Lynch, the original 'Hansel & Gretel' is divided into reality and three different spaces where the other side of reality crosses. < No Secret >, < No Regret > and < No Return > indicates the descriptive steps of the room they are located in.

In < No Secret > we meet sounds and texts. It starts with "Believe the opposite of the truth because the truth is actually stranger than fiction,” which is quoted out of her former works. This introducing space shows the clues shown in reality and the poetic meaning created by them advances to its re-composition or re-reading, continuing to the next space.
is a forest, the main stage of 'Hansel & Gretel'. This forest is where people who can't go back to the place they come from face. At the same time, it is a place showing newspapers removed of all except for the numbers. It is the April 3, 2007 newspaper, which the main news was the treaty of Korea-America FTA. The numbers left over by accidents, happenings, information and ads are scattered like codes or stars on the paper. The forest composed of trees, tables and numbers is a stage and at the same time, an extension of reality. It is a visualization of the former sound and text and a place where audience themselves become characters in a fiction.
The third space, composed of video projections is < No Return >. The videos are made up of a kind of fiction or a drama and were produced according to casting, acting, scenario and dramatic direction. The characteristics of the characters are explained by the sentences abstracted from the newspaper previously referred, dated on April 3, 2007.

Through this exhibition composed of images, sounds, prints, furniture, sculptures and drawings, Sora Kim once again emphasizes the importance of the audiences interpreting and understanding the artwork itself, which to her is no less important than the creating the artwork itself.


INSTALLATIONS


PUBLICATIONS

Hansel and Gretel

NEWS