Kim Beom
Kim Beom takes a humorous, irreverent approach to questions of meaning, learning, and understanding. “I don’t think that everything in human society is intelligent and reasonable,” he says. “Being absurd may not be a favorable human [characteristic], but it may be a part of [our] destiny.” 1
Kim is interested in exploring the ways in which knowledge is created and disseminated via educational systems and other modes of information circulation. He approaches this topic in numerous ways, though usually through a deeply absurdist lens. The installation series The Educated Objects (2010), for example, finds the artist instructing rocks and other inanimate objects in topics such as Korean poetry, a spectacle that is at once silly and tender in its suggestion of animism.
Part of a generation of artists who privilege ideas and language as subject matter in their work, Kim has forged a career defined by eclecticism, unencumbered by a desire to stake out a signature style and fluid with regard to mediums, materials, and methods. After decades away from painting, Kim returned to the medium in 2008 with the Intimate Suffering series, which includes Untitled (Intimate Suffering #11). This group of paintings is labor-intensive and darkly comic: in almost compulsive fashion, the artist painstakingly creates labyrinths, unrolling canvas in small sections and extending the maze as he goes.
The process of painting these works is for Kim almost an irrational act. He returns to the canvas section by section, executing by hand a task—the creation of a black-and-white maze first designed using Photoshop—that today would typically be the province of a printer. The concept of the laborer incongruously matched to his task, and his utter dedication to it nonetheless, is characteristic of Kim’s approach. Of this work, he has written, “This painting of [a] maze is based on visual perception that means it is not only to see, but also to read and solve the puzzle. The big puzzle is [a] metaphor of problems, matters, questions we face all the time as part of our lives in this world.” 2 Kim suggests that finding solutions to these problems is rarely a simple task and confronting our more complex challenges is an essential part of being human.
Introduction by Rebecca Lowery, art historian, 2018
-
Kim Beom Untitled (Intimate Suffering #11) 2012
-
Kim Beom Untitled 2016
-
Kim Beom Untitled (Water from Ganges River in the Cup Made with Newspaper from Congo) from an untitled series 2016
-
Kim Beom Untitled (Front Toe of Lion Standing on a Miniature Axe That Was Lost by a Tourist from Hawaii) from an untitled series 2016
-
Kim Beom Untitled (Wrongfully Made Barber's Chair) from an untitled series 2016
-
Kim Beom Untitled (Tongue of a Camel Tasting Rock Salt at a Construction Spot in Egypt) from an untitled series 2016
-
Kim Beom Untitled (A Bud Who Got a Package and Trying to Read the Name of Sender) from an untitled series 2016
-
Kim Beom Untitled (Nose of a Pig Smells Accelerator) from an untitled series 2016
-
Kim Beom Untitled (A Man in Subway Talking with His Fist the Dot at the Top Right Is Nothing) from an untitled series 2016
-
Kim Beom Untitled (A Bud with 2 New Leaves) from an untitled series 2016
-
Kim Beom Untitled (A Manta and Its Shadow) from an untitled series 2016
-
Kim Beom Untitled (A Cloud at the Top Left, Right Side a Swallow Head, Bottom Left a Bridge) from an untitled series 2016
-
Kim Beom Untitled (An Old Arrow Sign After Volcano Eruption) from an untitled series 2016
If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA’s collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).
All requests to license audio or video footage produced by MoMA should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills or motion picture footage from films in MoMA’s Film Collection cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For licensing motion picture film footage it is advised to apply directly to the copyright holders. For access to motion picture film stills please contact the Film Study Center. More information is also available about the film collection and the Circulating Film and Video Library.
If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication or moma.org, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA’s archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].
This record is a work in progress. If you have additional information or spotted an error, please send feedback to [email protected].