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Kim Soo-ja explores body and mind with clay
New York-based Kim, this year’s artist for the MMCA Hyundai Motor Series, presents new works
A huge wooden table fills an entire exhibition hall at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, overwhelming visitors with its scale. A museum employee hands visitors a lump of clay and asks them to make a ball with it on the elliptical wooden table that has a diameter of 19 meters.
Artist Kim Soo-ja poses with the sculpture “Deductive Object” in the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art’s courtyard. (Yoon Byung-chan/The Korea Herald) |
The interactive work aims to make visitors examine their state of mind through the repetitive gesture of rolling a lump of clay into a sphere.
“No matter how many times you try to roll it into a ball, it’s hard to make a perfect globe. I think the accidental edges (formed when creating) the ball is like the edges of your mind,” she explained, referring to the old Korean saying that your mind becomes round and flexible over the years through frustrations and troubles in life.
A scene from “Thread Routes V” by Kim Soo-ja (MMCA) |
“The experiences with bundles of cloth and the clay ball share a geometrical logic in the acts,” said Kim. “You end up encountering nonmaterial features through the experience with material objects.”
At the exhibition, the artist also presents an old yoga mat she used for nine years from 2006-2015. It bears the traces of the artist’s hands and feet. In her yoga practice, the 59-year-old artist found corporeal geometry that is closely associated with her exploration of the discovery of spiritual values through physical action.
“Archive of Mind” by Kim Soo-ja (MMCA) |
“My film series is a visual poetry, or anthropology,” said Kim.
“Geometry of Body” (2006-2015) by Kim Soo-ja (MMCA) |
The artist has held numerous solo exhibitions at major museums around the world, including the Center Pompidou-Metz in France, Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. She represented the Korean Pavilion at Venice Biennale in 2013.
Kim Soo-ja’s “Archive of Mind” runs until Feb. 5 at the MMCA. For more information, visit www.mmca.go.kr.
By Lee Woo-young (wylee@heraldcorp.com)