About what´s not so
different:
Our primary goal us is to
function as the subject´s specialist. Through a creative process Kim Kim
Gallery is accentuating, strengthening, comparing the artists works to the
space, physically and theoretically which they are shown in. Researching the
subject and conserving, documenting and supplying the full range of
administrative matter, such as insurance and loans, contact to journalist,
theoreticians, art-critics, museum or even other galleries. We offer services
to the artist, like publications, public relation through advertisement and contact
to writers and theoreticians as well as collectors, all like a “real” gallery
and Museums. We try to do that most efficiently and successfully since 2008.
Right from the start we developed a certain “look and feel” through our public
image and a certain “flair” through rather unconventional “crazy” marketing.
So what´s so different after
all?:
First of all Kim Kim Gallery
sees itself as an ever-changing installation, a malleable tool to intensify,
clarify, methodize or short to deliver the artists work. We consider the use of
the concept of the Gallery as a part of the enlarged notion of art. Another
distinctive trait of KKG is the choice of artists we are working with.
The Artists:
The artist of KKG have in
common that they may quite often be considered as artists´ artists. They
produce highly individual works and use peculiar methods, themes and means to
do so. They are not necessarily unknown to the wider public, but it may quite
well coincide with the fact. One of the more obvious features of KKG is the
absence of a fixed location of the Gallery and so it likes to be considered as a
locative art work, until further notice. Logically the shows are special in its
approach to the art of the artist, location, representation of the artwork and
make them concatonate.
The Gallery is run since
2008 by Gregory S. Maass and Nayoungim, who work also as an artist Duo on their
own work, and consider KKG one of their more complete installations. In the
past we also cooperated with other “real” galleries, and institutions like
Spencer Brownstone Gallery in New York or Galerie Ursula Walbröl in Düsseldorf,
Germany. And showed at several occasions on international contemporary art fares.
We symbiotically use the infrastructures of these spaces with a simultaneously
commercial and artistic intent.
Last but not least:
Financing/Money: apart from
crazy marketing, and public funding the Gallery is sometimes producing a very
modest profit, which is reinvested into future activities and consignments. Success
in our case does not primarily mean financial success, but expression of highly
individual artistic approaches and production of singular artwork. We try to
have an un-egocentric perspective on art by shedding a wholistic and
self-forgetting and overly self-conscious light on art. Here I mention our
latest and most ambitious project “Douglasism”
with the British artist Douglas Park
whose work is of rather insubstantial, ephemeral, performative and medial
character, but all the more rewarding to us, the public and of course the
artist. More about him further down the page.
Here a short list of some less common Kim Kim Gallery
shows:
2012: Jeff Gabel “More of the Best of Firmin Graf
Salawàr dej Stries”
An Approach through
Translations & Adaptations:
Gabel has exhibited
translations of different types of writing, primarily literature, into various
formats (bound typed books with hand illustrations, audio books, etc.). His
translated adaptation of the novella "Vierundzwanzig Stunden aus dem Leben
einer Frau" (Twenty-four Hours in the Life of a Woman) by Stephan Zweig,
rendered in pencil in large-scale comic book format, and his audio/visual
translation/adaptation of "Gladius Dei" by Thomas Mann have been
exhibited and reviewed repeatedly. In 2009, he created and performed a complete
re-enactment of the 1935 novel "Salwàre oder Die Magdalena von
Bozen," by Carl Zuckmayer called The Moons Ride Over, after the novel's
English translation title. His work also includes translations from Finnish and
the Veps language. Gabel's translations typically attempt a relatively literal
portrayal of the content, while largely ignoring editorial conventions and
appropriateness of style and voice.
For Kim Kim Gallery he will realize a series of
drawings referring to the novel "The Moons Ride Over" by Carl
Zuckmayer and exhibit his audio/visual translation/adaptation of "Gladius
Dei" by Thomas Mann.
Douglasism: Kim Kim Gallery @ Art:Gwangju:12
Douglasism is a
term deriving from the name of the contemporary British artist Douglas Park. It
refers to a show curated by the late Piers Wardle
(Lewis Draper). We adopted this title and consider Douglasism a perspective on the totality of the creative
activity of Douglas Park. Who is Douglas Park?In his own words: „born: 23-01-1972, United Kingdom visual artist, writer (of literary prose and critical essays, both mostly art connected), exhibition curator and multiple practices and roles combined.“
DP´s work produces little in the realm of tangible oeuvre but quite a creative presence on the whole. DP is a phenomenon of self-less catalysis. DP is a polyvalent artist, actor, narrator, writer, curator. His is a vast but strangely untangible oeuvre of great humanism. Kim Kim Gallery is following DP´s work and activity since 2008 and is strongly supportive to his unique oeuvre and expression of individuality in the artworld.
In 2012 we looked into the possibilities to perform as a Gallery on an art fair without showing any actual artwork and decided as Kim Kim Gallery to promote Douglasism through a solo-exhibition for the Gwangju Art Fair 2012. There DP´s work was merely represented indirectly through the works of many other artists, through film, photography, audio works and the written word. DP´s work is mainly media-based and incorporated in texts, acting, performing, reading, and curating. The show was widely successful and led us to the decision to work on a series of exhibitions & events gyrating around DOUGLASISM.
Participating artist were: Monika K. Adler, Matthew Burbidge, Marc Vaulbert de Chantilly, Cel Crabeels, Gideon Cube-Sherman, Michael Croft, Claire Fontaine, Anthony Gross, Jonathan Lahey Dronsfield, Christina Mitrentse, Michelle Naismith, Olive Martin, Douglas Park, Owen Piper, The Rack, Aeon Rose, Rob Voerman, Mark Aerial Waller, Piers Wardle (Lewis Draper).
We are now preparing a DOUGLASISM festival.
Chung Seo-young , solo-show, “Apple vs. Banana”
Hyundai Group was founded as
a construction company, which rapidly achieved legendary status. These
legendary times lived on in the second sublevel of the Hyundai Cultural Center
in Seoul, where KIM KIM GALLERY occupies two model apartments from the early
90s. Chung Seoyoung and KIM KIM GALLERY have different biographies and
different perspectives, which created an amplification of the creative output
in the subterrenean premises of another époque.
Chung Seoyoung work for this
show deal pragmatically and humorously with the grotesque choices we make in
our life. The title “Apple vs. Banana” derives from the common dietary choice
of dietary fiber vs. carbohydrate, one of the endless ironies in modern-day.
What´s better? Both are the best.
In this show Chung Seoyoung
accentuates the bland, taking away the details and leaving us with rather less
than more, producing a range of sober, pure and obviously inexpressive works of
art.
Chung Seoyoung built a set
of objects: tables, a lightbulb, a kitchenette, an aquarium, a spot, and
snowballs. She constructed a certain encompassing physical and organizational
structure in the model apartments.
Nakyoung Sung & Nakhee Sung: “Stuffs!”
Nakyoung
and Nakhee are sisters. We were interested in showing a very peculiar state.
Each of them creates a large space around herself which their art inhabits,
there is no third place possible. Nakyoung Sung creates a large, diverse and
sub-divided, multi-channel space, Nakhee Sung on the other hand creates a
single profound and many layered space. Both spaces are linked like a zipper.
It´s like a spatial oxymoron.
Kim Kim
Gallery installed the show of Nakyoung Sung and Nakhee Sung and in a space near
Dosan Park in Seoul, the title of the show is : “Stuffs!”. This show was very
different from before, “Apple vs. Banana”. The last venue was held in a place
of times long forgotten, an architectural time capsule, charming, nostalgic and
romantic in the way of the 90s. It had also a close connection to the nature of
the artworks exhibited. This new place we were working in was right in the
center of new Seoul (Gangnam) an area which does not stop transforming and
mutating itself. Houses there mutate from Villa, to fashion Boutique, to
Chapel, to you name it in rapid succession. Big Galleries and Art Spaces run by
companies settle in the neighborhood. It might well become a new center for
contemporary art in Seoul.
2008: The first “Kim Kim Gallery at Market Gallery”,
Glasgow.
For
our first solo-exhibition in the UK we turned Market Gallery´s space into a let´s call it ‘supermodern’
exhibition
venue by installing a Gallery within a Gallery.
The
regular visitors to the gallery noticed that we responded to the lighting and
breezeblock walls, a unique architectural features of Market Gallery, radically
transforming the space for the exhibition. Within the appropriated space the
public is presented with three large structures mimicking billboards forming
the letters ‘K’, ‘I’, and ‘M’. The structures are
interconnected with delicate arrangements of un-pasted mass produced wallpaper.
We refered to all of the pieces of work within the space as ‘non-art-objects.’
Since
then Kim Kim Gallery is an approach to art that has been recreated in a number
of spaces internationally. Gregory Maass and Nayoungim intend to reconfigure in
these venues the established principles and the working methods of typical art show organizations.
Dec. 2012
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