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until 12.02. | #0974ARTatBerlin | Magic Beans presents from 13th January 2017 the first solo exhibition “IF YOU SEE ME NOW YOU DON’T” by the artist Sang Woo Kim.
Magic Beans presents Sang Woo Kim’s first solo
exhibition “IF YOU SEE ME NOW YOU DON’T”. This exhibition
comprises a body of new paintings, photography and video work
that reflect the artist’s layered conception of identity.
In this exhibit Kim looks at a much discussed and relevant topic,
first generation immigrants and their struggle with cultural duality.
He brings awareness to this conflict and expresses it poetically and
also with a sense of irony and humor. His aim is to surprise the
viewer and cause a disruption that allows people to truly “see”.
Sang Woo Kim was raised in London with traditional Korean parents. He always felt “other”
to the people around him, whom were mainly of Western descent. Alienating cultural factors
affected him from a very young age. At home a cognitive dissonance arose from a drastically
different daily school life. With this new body of work he is confronting these memories
through a recontextualization of old works. He literally builds up and breaks down boundaries
to create a visual “skin” composed of nostalgia and recollections.
The emotional realisation of his fractured identity imbues the works with a newfound purpose
that he subversively exploits through his various facades. Identity takes on new connotations
in the modern social media world, where one’s persona is a multi-layered construct and can
be created out of thin air. The question inherent in Kim’s work is what constitutes identity and
how much of it is “real”?
Kim’s paintings are abstract and textured, capturing a similar emotional brutality that was
present in artworks from the 1950’s abstract expressionist era. The blurred lines and varying
textures remove the identity of the subject. He purposefully uses abstraction as a means to
communicate detached melancholy content. Text drawn on his painting, “Easy on the eye”
reads, I was blind when I was younger, and conflates seeing and being seen, the subject and
the voyeur. Kim’s paintings suggest that the gaze comes from within and is tied to one’s
identity and until one can cultivate it, one will always view himself and the world self
consciously.
Vernissage: Friday, 13th January 2017, 6 to 9 p.m.
Exhibition period: Friday, 13th January to Sunday, 12th February 2017
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Image caption: via Magic Beans, Sang Woo Kim exhibition flyer
Exhibtion Sang Woo Kim – Magic Beans – Kunst in Berlin ART at Berlin
