Kim Beom
Animalia
April 22–June 19, 2011
Opening:
Thursday, April 21 | 6-8pm631 West 2nd Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012
www.redcat.org
Through an expansive practice that spans drawing, sculpture, video, and artist books, Kim contemplates a world in which perception is radically questioned. His visual language is characterized by deadpan humor and absurdist propositions that playfully and subversively invert expectations. By suggesting that what you see may not be what you see, Kim reveals the tension between internal psychology and external reality, and relates observation and knowledge as states of mind.
Organized around the theme and title Animalia, Kim’s exhibition explores the vast sphere of nature and the animal kingdom, often inverting its laws and collapsing the boundaries of living beings and inanimate objects. Refusing to accept the clear distinctions that separate realms of existence, Kim deftly employs animism, illusion and a deep sense of empathy in his works to reflect upon and transgress the social institutions that delineate natural order.
For the exhibition at REDCAT, Kim presents a recent series of sculptural tableaux titled “The Educated Objects” (2010)—four discrete installations of objects and video—which explore social education and developmental psychology. The works—A Rock That Was Taught It Was a Bird, A Ship That Was Taught There Is No Sea, A Rock That Learned the Poetry of JUNG Jiyong and Objects Being Taught They Are Nothing But Tools—employ the techniques of pedagogy to alter and invert socialization processes that give way to knowledge and learning. In addition, a selection of drawings from the artist’s “Perspectives and Blueprints” series will be on view. Made since the early 2000s, these drawings imagine, with great detail, structures and instruments of control for criminals, tyrants and spies, while operating as parodies on social and political order. The suite of drawings will be shown with two recent videos Horse Riding Horse (After Eadweard Muybridge) and Spectacle.
In conjunction with the exhibition, REDCAT will publish a catalogue on the artist’s extensive body of drawings from the mid-1990s to the present. The book will include color and black-and-white illustrations of the artist’s works and textual contributions by Clara Kim, Paola Morsiani and Park Chan-Kyong.
Kim Beom (b. 1963, Seoul) currently lives and works in Seoul, where he received his BFA and MFA from Seoul National University in 1986 and 1988, respectively. In 1991, Kim received a second MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, where he continued to live and work throughout the 1990s. He has since had numerous solo exhibitions in such venues as the Artsonje Center, Seoul and, most recently, at the Cleveland Museum of Art. In addition to being featured prominently in recent surveys of contemporary art from Korea at such venues as the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, his work has been included in such notable international exhibitions as the 2003 Istanbul Biennial, the 2005 Venice Biennale and Media City Seoul 2010.
The exhibition is made possible through collaboration with the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Major funding for the exhibition and publication provided by the Korea Foundation with generous support from Stacy and John Rubeli. Additional support provided by the Kwon Family Foundation.
Gallery at REDCAT aims to support, present, commission and nurture new creative insights through dynamic projects and challenging ideas. The Gallery presents five exhibitions every year, often of newly commissioned work that represents the artist’s first major presentation in the U.S. or Los Angeles. The Gallery also maintains an active publishing program producing as many as two major monographs per year. Proceeding from the geographic and cultural specificities of Los Angeles, its program emphasizes artistic production of the Pacific Rim—namely Mexico, Central and South America and Asia—as regions that are of vital significance to California. The Gallery aims to facilitate dialogue between local and international artists contributing to a greater understanding of the social, political and cultural contexts that inform contemporary artistic practice.
Gallery at REDCAT is open Tuesdays through Sundays from noon to 6:00pm or until intermission. It is closed Mondays and major holidays. Admission to the Gallery at REDCAT is always free.
REDCAT is located at the corner of W. 2nd and Hope Streets, inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex in downtown Los Angeles (631 West 2nd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012).
