Beom Kim  (b. 1963, Seoul)

 (from left to right) Beom Kim, Untitled (1991-97), 26 drawings on paper in watercolor, pencil, color pencil, ink, marker, 24 pics. 38x30cm, 1 pc. 32.5 x 42.7 cm cm, 1 pc. 63 x 47.8 cm, Private Collection ; 10 Animated Drawings (2007), 3 min 10 sec, no sound, Courtesy of the Artist ; A Plant from the Places #3(2009, planted in 2007), cut-up magazine photograph of plants and earth, glue, wood, dimensions variable, Courtesy of the Artist


Since his debut in the late 80s after studying ceramics in Seoul, Beom Kim¡¯s ironical conceptualism has taken a unique position in the Korean art scene. Despite of having attended college in the 80s during Korea¡¯s student democratization movement, Kim has kept a balanced distance from diverse battles with a seemingly cool decency and playful humor that in fact disguise an intense physical production process and pungent criticism of reality. His oeuvre ranges from works in canvas, drawings and text pieces, to objects, video and animation. The works by Beom Kim touch on subjects related to what is seen and what is real, visible appearance and invisible substance, reality as a physical actuality and reality as an object of recognition, functional object and non-functional artwork, and conventional thinking and liberal imagination. Kim¡¯s attitude to overturn common patterns of thinking is condensed in his drawing series. With their moments of liberation and awakening, these works are having a profound influence on younger generation artists. 

If some of his early works showed that the real and the visible coexist in tight tension co-referring each other, other pieces like The Art of Transforming and Inanimated Objects depict the state of transmission between the two sides across a fluid border. His new sculpture Plant from the Place is made from cut-up magazine photographs of plants and earth, and ¡°grows¡± as the images are collected and glued on a daily basis. Kim says, ¡°[i]n most cases, the world exists, known and understood through mass media, which is another dimension of the world based on complicated notions. This plant is a certain type of life transmitted from a specific dimension to this real world of an individual¡±. Plant from the Place, while keeping the quintessential persistency, modesty and ironical twist of Beom Kim, shows his increased attention to delicate caring of a world that is real to an individual.