Kim Beom: How to become a rock

Leeum Museum of Art presents How to become a rock, a solo exhibition of one of Korea’s leading contemporary artists, Kim Beom. Comprising works from the early 1990s to the mid-2010s, the large-scale survey exhibition brings together more than 70 works, including his early paintings and pieces from overseas collections that have rarely been shown in Korea.

Spanning across diverse media, Kim probes the gap between what is seen and what lies within, along with animistic thinking and hypothetical situations that shatter stereotypes. In his work, an antelope chases a cheetah, a dog bursts through a wall, a ship learns that there is no ocean, and a car key is transformed into mountainous landscapes. Combining his uniquely unpretentious forms with extraordinary ideas, Kim’s works are not only refreshing to the eye, but also overturn basic premises of the world, making us aware of areas of truth hidden by social conventions. Pursuing an aesthetic that may appear excessively calm and even ascetic, Kim rules that “what you see is not all of what you see,” a self-reflective statement in its own right. As such, he urges us to question what we know, see, and believe, pushing aside all habitual thinking and awakening in us a way of “seeing” that is entirely new and different. 

The exhibition title, How to become a rock, is an excerpt from Kim’s artist book, The Art of Transforming (1997). More than a direct reference to the content of the book, the exhibition seeks ways to exist in a world dominated by power and control and leads us to reflect on the identities, and the variable relationships therein, formed by uniform rote learning. His sensitive and incisive critical thinking vigorously explores what humans project and their inherent contradictions, as well as the gap between image and substance. While his seemingly clumsy craftsmanship redefines the relationship between materiality and immateriality in art, his deliberate lo-fi sensibility emerges as a quiet resistance to all standardized thinking, impervious to the speed and trends of today.

Public programs in conjunction with the exhibition include: a conversation between the artist Kim Beom, exhibition curator Sungwon Kim, and Eungie Joo (Head of Contemporary Art, SFMOMA); a lecture led by poet Oh Eun, which explores the artist’s writing and book-making practices; and Critic’s Circle, which brings together emerging critics and art professionals to critically engage with and expand on the works of Kim Beom. 

Kim Beom: How to become a rock is curated by Sungwon Kim (Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Leeum Museum of Art) with Jiwon Yu (Curator, Leeum Museum of Art) and supported by various departments of the Museum.

Kim Beom (b. 1963, lives and works in Seoul)
Kim Beom’s solo exhibitions include Water from Ganges River in the Cup Made with Newspaper from Congo (Kunsthal Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark, 2019), Random Life (STPI, Singapore, 2017), Continuing Studies (Plug In Institution of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg, Canada, 2016), Kim Beom (Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada, 2015), The School of Inversion (Hayward Gallery, London, UK, 2012), Animalia (REDCAT, LA, USA, 2011), Kim Beom: Objects Being Taught They Are Nothing But Tools (Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, USA, 2010), and Kim Beom (Art Sonje Center, Seoul, Korea, 2010). He has participated in international exhibitions including the Sharjah Biennial 12 (UAE, 2015), the 9th Gwangju Biennale (Gwangju, Korea, 2012), The 6th Seoul International Biennale of Media Art (now the Seoul Mediacity Biennale) Media City Seoul 2010 (Seoul, Korea, 2010), the Korean Pavilion at the 51st Venice biennale (Italy, 2005), the 8th ististan Biennale (Turkey, 2003), and the 1st Taipei Biennial (Taiwan, 1998).

For further information, please contact Miso Han (Public Relations) at miso.han [at] samsung.com