Installation view of 《The Theatre of Phantom Organ》 © Wumin Art Center
Wumin Art Center
presents 《The Theatre of Phantom Organ》, a solo
exhibition by Jiana Kim, winner of the 24th Wumin Art Prize, on view through
September 19.
Jiana Kim has explored
the generation and disappearance of existence, as well as the restoration of
relationships, through clay and light. Over many years, she has developed the ‘Inside’ series, in which thin monochromatic porcelain fragments fired at
high temperatures are densely embedded into canvas surfaces. Through this body
of work, she has continued to contemporarily expand both the formal qualities
and materiality of Korean Dansaekhwa painting.
Installation view of 《The Theatre of Phantom Organ》 © Wumin Art Center
The ever-changing
images of the porcelain fragments, transformed by light, evoke a sense of
vitality and encourage viewers to reflect on the relationship they form with
the work. In this exhibition, Kim moves beyond the flat support of the canvas
and adopts discarded heat exchangers as the support for a new body of work,
presenting the ‘Phantom Organ’ series,
which speaks of our vanished emotional organs.
In 《The
Theatre of Phantom Organ》, Jiana Kim transforms
decommissioned industrial devices into emotional organs, posing new questions
about the meanings of existence and relationship. The exhibition regards
disappearance not as an end but as the possibility of another beginning, and
through the process of reconnecting with beings pushed to the margins, it
invites us to reconsider the emotions and modes of coexistence we have
forgotten.
Furthermore, it
proposes a world in which humans and objects, nature and industry, creation and
disappearance are bound together in an ongoing cycle of relationships,
ultimately confronting us with a fundamental question: by what is existence
defined?
