Kim Kulim

MMCA presents a solo exhibition highlighting the oeuvre of Kim Kulim (b. 1936), a pioneering artist holding a significant status in Korean contemporary art history as one of the founders of Korean Experimental art. Maintaining a rebellious attitude towards established values and customs, Kim has produced a wide scope of experimental works, including paintings, prints, sculptures, installations, performances, Land art, Video art, and Mail art. He has also been involved in experimental plays, films, music, and dance.

The artist entered the art scene through his first solo exhibition, Kim Kulim’s Solo Exhibition of Oil Paintings, at Daegu Public Hall Gallery in 1959. During the 1960s, Kim ventured into textiles, film, theatre, and dance, accumulating experiences that would later inform his artistic endeavors. In the late 1960s, he made numerous pioneering contributions to the Korean contemporary art scene, including the first Korean Electric art, Space Construction (1968), and Relics of Mass Media (1969), a work that inaugurated the history of Korean Mail art. He simultaneously participated in artist collectives like Painting 68 and AG (Korean Avant-Garde Association), and played a leading role in the Fourth Group.

Between 1973 and 1975, while residing in Japan, Kim delved deeper into the concept of time through various artistic practices, including objects, video, and print. By coloring and sanding manufactured objects such as brooms, wiping cloths, buckets, and light bulbs, he aimed to “send the present time back into the past.” Examples like Broom (1973) and Wiping Cloth (1974), a video work in which Kim continuously wiped a stained desk with a duster until it became frayed and worn-out, conveyed not only that visible objects are phenomena rather than essences, but also questioned the relationship between time and objects. Notable exhibitions during this period included Kim Kulim (Shirota Gallery, Tokyo Japan, 1973) and the second Impact Art Video Art 74 (Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Lausanne, Switzerland, 1974).

In 1984, Kim made the decision to move to the US, where he immersed himself in the concept of “Yin and Yang” to encapsulate the coexistence and entanglement of all things, which he then employed as titles for his works. Amid the concrete jungle of Manhattan, New York, Kim nurtured a yearning for nature that formed the basis of his Tree and Landscape series. During his time in California, he depicted the contrast between nature and the man-made, utilizing large-scale multiple canvases and amalgamations of objects and images within the picture plane.

Upon returning to Korea in 2000, the artist began productively creating object works using seemingly disparate waste materials or iconographies of Buddha and skulls. Through collages of conventional images circulated by mass media or the deconstruction and reconstruction of multiple objects, he reimagined the “present.”

This exhibition’s primary aim is to convey Kim’s oeuvre as comprehensively as possible, shedding new light on the historical achievements of Kim Kulim, as well as the trajectories of his current practice. It spans Kim’s early paintings in the 1960s, performances, and installations presented during the wave of Korean Experimental art in the 1960s and 1970s, and the ongoing Yin and Yang series since the mid-1980s. Additionally, in this current exhibition, Kim stages a hybrid performance that bridges film, dance, music, and theater at MMCA Seoul Multi-Project Hall. It offers an invaluable opportunity to journey alongside Kim Kulim, revisit pivotal moments in his career, and to widen your understanding of Korean art history along the steps of the artist’s life.