Objects Being Taught They Are Nothing But Tools

The Cleveland Museum of Art presents Kim Beom: Objects Being Taught They Are Nothing But Tools.

The Cleveland Museum of Art presents the first solo museum exhibition in the United States of the work of Korean artist Kim Beom. The exhibition includes three new mixed-media installations and selections of drawings from 1994 to the present. It will be on view in the museum’s 1,800-square-foot project gallery from November 13, 2010, until March 6, 2011.


With an expressive vocabulary that relies on deadpan humor, absurdist enunciation, poetry, and childlike imagery, Kim investigates our perception of the world by bringing reality and imagination closer together. By referencing animistic notions by which artists ascribe a spiritual core to individual works, as well as 20th-century avant-gardes that mined the human subconscious and practiced a kind of social awareness, Kim’s work has developed around the visual tradition of illusionism. In particular, Kim inspires the viewer to come closer and become actively engaged—or even entangled—in the projection of images and thoughts. Fusing the position of artist and docent, and merging the art object with the larger social field, these works stand for how we invest art with meaning. This exhibition introduces the viewer to Kim’s multifaceted work in a variety of media, as well as his continued reflection on Korean society and its recent history.

Daily objects, wooden chairs, blackboard with fluorescent light, wooden tables, single channel video on TV monitor (21 min., 8 sec.); approx. 165.5 x 427.5 x 230 cm (overall).
<교육된 사물들>, 2010

Courtesy of the artist. © Kim Beom.


A Rock That Wasa Taught It Was a Bird
2010

<정지용의 시를 배운 돌 A Rock That Learned the Poetry of JUNG Jiyong>

돌, 나무, 테이블, 9인치 평면 모니터에 1채널비디오, 12시간 11분, 가변크기

Stone, wood, wooden table, single channel video on 12-inch flat monitor
(1 hr. 27 min. 30 sec.)
approx. 146.8x220.5x127.7cm (overall)
Courtesy of the artist. © Kim Beom.

Video still of A Rock That Was Taught It Was a Bird, 2010. Kim Beom (Korean, b. 1963).
Courtesy of the artist and Cleveland Museum of Art


via http://museumpublicity.com