Sangdon Kim  (b. 1973, Seoul)

Sangdon Kim, Rose Island(2009), mixed media installation(4 channel video, object, photographs), dimensions variable, Courtesy of the Artist

Kim detects complex conflicts of charged tension in every moment of quotidian life of an individual from a bio-political sense. The authoritative violence, once believed to come only from the level of nation-state, is executed under the disguise of ¡°public manner¡± by interpersonal surveillance and discipline. Public virtues such as courtesy, piety, politeness, geniality, and even happiness are politically imbued behavior patterns adopted by an individual as a kind of safe standard for survival in a severe reality. Kim particularly defies the inconspicuous and contaminating agents like compliance and complacency that grow into a comprehensive silence and insensibility at a public level. Rather than flatly criticizing the situation, Kim amplifies the moment of micro-revolution articulated in vernacular languages, a kind of rupture or epiphany leaking or glimpsed from hard concealment. The languages Kim detects might be the non-verbal sounds of unanimated objects, or even bodily motions in a fleeting moment.

Kim¡¯s new production Rose Island is an installation composed of photographs, videos and objects. The videos show diverse modes of self-manifestation by different subjects including even a few grains of rice and a mirror. Ironically the most muted and motionless subjects are human beings, whose feeble, everyday routine gestures seem trapped or repeated. To quote Kim, however, ¡°could even the seemingly ¡®useless¡¯ gestures be considered meaningless? Sometimes, ¡®doing nothing¡¯ could be the only mode of confrontation. I could intuitively see a certain rigor and craving among the people. If they are deprived of or even displaced from a verbal language, artists should suggest for them a different mode of articulation¡±