0 Columns, 2022 Introduction/ Sungah Serena Choo The first shape appeared with humans building something on land began with erecting a column. This point of view extends beyond the physical aspect of the structural meaning when actually building a space. Given the relation with its surroundings, the erected sculptural structure involves the attitude of activating along with the environment. It becomes a complete form in itself belonging to the spatial system, understood in the context of architecture with the space it forms. In Juree Kim’s solo exhibition @0 Columns@, the artist traces the senses of accumulated time which can be discovered in the constructive manner applied in ‘Wet Matter’ which she had continuously experimented with. Such sense of time is also implied in the form which envelops her work. Juree Kim’s sculpture resembles the origin of architecture which begins with erecting a column on a piece of land. The column as the act of establishment is continued onto the sculptural attitude while building a structure, weaving a mass, or carving a surface. During such process, the philosophical and formative meanings are discovered. In 0 Columns there is a huge, pleated sculpture which conjures up a sort of curtain, and there are some separated lumps derived from it. Thus, the focus is on the fluid time of condensation and reproduction between the sculpture and architecture. This is born from all the standard and atypical forms that human beings and their history have known. Kim refers to them, weaves the ‘wet matter’ based on its texture and form in order to construct the senses of the past and the present. It is as if she has invited a phantom that never dies via this huge tomb, and a peculiar situation is created by the curtain which covers up something we refuse to see the most, or the contrary. In this regard, the number ‘0(zero)’ mentioned in the title implies that the single big sculpture allows something to be plural rather than a fixed number, and when it volatilizes, the intangible senses that are accumulated converge the variables of both extremities: ‘which is nothing’ or ‘which can become anything.’ Memories and senses collected throughout the creative process are fossilized real-time. By witnessing such opposite nature, we are quickly drawn to the supernatural effort and search into material shown though the scale of work and space revealed by the sculpture. The series “Wet Matter” composed of several masses reminds us of the ancient huge stone culture. For example, just the fact that a huge stone was moved around in the past would make us think of some magical nature allowing its transport from a place to another. Thus, the ritual character of a place is emphasized many times more. The fantastic and peculiar sense of rendering a mass gigantic is realized when the sculpture and space meet symbolically. In this exhibition with the element of gigantism put forward, we are led to view the space where the basic materiality of wet dirt is expanded, then we find a landscape blended in it, of a mixed nature and separation. Furthermore, the lumps interact with their environment, and when erected in a specific space the decisive factors which would discern the border are texture, silhouette, volume, size of each mass. When all these factors gather, space is formed and meaning of border is found. Time scattering and gathering in between the border of space and sculpture reveals itself as distorted incomplete form and materiality. On the other hand, Kim’s twofold attitude of solidly using the fluid form of earth, which is a variable matter, represents her intent of freezing time. The series “Wet Matter” shown in @0 Columns@ which attempts to display an array of white surface and transformation of loose forms, recomposes the materiality on purpose so that the matter itself may become a form. Physically important characters are conferred upon this recomposed materiality which maintains its dullness and wetness as well as stand as a mass of great gravity. That is, the fundamental material which reminds us of wet land and surface resembling ‘flesh’ upon the view of this condensed mass of something raw, is invited to be perceived through the device of ‘crease’ which had involved the artist’s body modeling the form. For example, the modeled crease on the wet dirt surface allows us to breathe against the full blocked view. It guides us to observe the surface itself since we cannot fathom what is behind such a mass. Therefore, we are led to focus on the ‘state’ of being able to discern the object or perceive it real-time. Here, the viewer is allowed the time to sense the physical distance, to approach closer to the surface and check the texture and verify the actual matter. While seeing the frame of surface, one can realize the moment of subverting the perception of visibility in the fact that one verifies the physical location of a surface, rather than focusing on the texture, between two surfaces. The exhibition @0 Columns@ naturally tries to question the original version of the material in the process of designing the wet state in “Wet Matter,” as its ‘state’ is rendered by blending dirt particles and artificial ingredients. As the basic material for sculpture, earth moves with the artist’s body and carves the surface and silhouette in real-time since the movement maintains the form. Parts of this form are linked in the intuitive flow. In the end, the attempt made by the artist is to maintain the materiality of earth and to simultaneously diminish such nature. She acknowledges the nature of expansion and contraction of dirt particles and applies the changes to her work to create detailed forms. In doing so, she succeeds in making the specific material weaved onto the sculpture reveal the relation between structure and materiality and approach the essence of form. But at the same time, the material created by Kim feigns being the original version of the matter and goes against its nature. This attitude itself becomes the matter itself. This could be read as a defensive gesture toward the ‘reason’ of the object. The artist attempts to sense the memory and history potentially embedded in the medium through the method of materializing the memory and sense of immaterial elements such as temperature and humidity which surround time and space. Hence @0 Columns@ may regain the maximal value of materiality which Kim has realized by creating the visual spectacle made by the sheer density of the mass which fills up the space to suffocation, which matches the fluid nature of the matter in question.
Solid Water, Liquid Earth, 2020 Critic/ Andy St. Louis At the core of Juree Kim’s sculptural practice is an ongoing dialogue with dualities of existence. Materiality and ephemerality, permanence and transience—these recurring themes find form in multiple contexts throughout her oeuvre, always within a framework that implicates the landscape and its inexorable cycle of change. Kim activates elements of water and earth through her habitual use of clay as a primary medium, which she keeps in a raw, unfired state in order to facilitate a correspondence between matière and environment. Her works are thus tethered to natural processes while manifesting the imprints of artistic intervention, asserting an ontological instability premised upon these competing influences and transforming the exhibition space into a stage for rendering the passage of time. I. Sedimentation Situated at the northernmost point of China’s shoreline, the city of Dandong rises from the muddy banks of the Yalu River, a waterway that creates a natural border between China and North Korea. As opposed to a wall, fence or other reinforced demarcation line, this permeable river boundary has contributed to the formation of a heterogeneous population in Dandong that includes Chinese nationals, North Koreans and South Koreans, resulting in a degree of cultural hybridization found throughout border regions worldwide. The city also operates as an export production hub for China’s trade with North Korea, fostering an economic interdependence that further abstracts sociopolitical distinctions between communities on either side of the border. This confluence of cultures is reflected in the local landscape, which captivated Juree Kim during her recent visit to Dandong. As the Yalu River empties into the Korea Bay, it creates an alluvial estuary: a landscape eternally in flux. The gradual accumulation of sediment that creates the necessary conditions for this delicate ecosystem is testament to the uninterrupted process of exchange between soil, stone and sea, yielding a semi-solid substrate of mud and silt that originates from sources upstream. In the fullness of time, sedimentary deposits of this accumulated organic matter can eventually solidify into rock formations, concluding a natural cycle in which earth is broken down and transported via natural flows of water or wind, before being reconstituted elsewhere anew. An assessment of Kim’s sculpture over the past 15 years reveals sedimentation as an apt metaphor that resonates with her most recent body of work. Although the fundamental substance of her sculptural medium is the same as ever, its form and scale have metamorphosed. Her longstanding interest in the dissolution of clay structures in water has been supplanted by an newfound impetus to reconstitute the murky liquid byproduct of this process by amassing clay forms of an altogether different sort. The ample lumps of clay that comprise Kim’s recent body of work may have coalesced into semi-solid concretions, but they are nonetheless subject to subsequent transformation through nature’s perpetual cycle of change. These sculptures have yet to reach their final, hardened state; they remain wet and, in that sense, impermanent. II. A Certain Wetness In adopting a trilingual title for her new site-specific sculpture series, Kim advocates an indeterminate sensibility that invites multiple interpretations of her work. The exhibition’s Korean title moseup (모습) translates as “appearance” or “shape,” meanings which imply a purely formal approach to beholding an object. However, the abstract and seemingly arbitrary visual attributes of this sculptural series thwart such efforts, forcing viewers to abandon any attempt at surface-level engagement with Kim’s bulging, non-representational masses. Further heightening the aesthetic ambiguity of these forms within the exhibition space is a minimal lighting scheme that casts expansive shadows across each work and precludes viewers from fully discerning their subtle contours. Despite their distinctive visual quality, these sculptures are difficult to accurately describe, inducing a secondary mode of awareness in their encounter. The lack of an easily identifiable appearance obliges viewers to look elsewhere for insight into Kim’s inscrutable structures: their materiality, the literal stuff they are made of. Although the English title “Wet Matter” establishes a qualitative framework for contemplating Kim’s sculptural medium, it refrains from defining it in any meaningful way, since to acknowledge that the sculptures are wet is to offer all but the most basic description of their physical features. Even so, this categorization is of little help, since it merely implies the presence of a liquid on the surface of a substance, not the amount of saturation therein; the point at which something can be considered wet—whether clammy, moist, slippery, drenched or otherwise—is an inherently subjective assessment. Kim’s nomenclature of equivocation is echoed in her use of the word ‘matter’ in the title, another signifier that encompasses an impossibly broad spectrum of referents as an imprecise designation of no real significance. Turning to the exhibition’s Chinese title (某濕) introduces yet more uncertainty, at least initially. Its first character (某) means something akin to ‘any’ or ‘certain,’ and functions to denote a particular subject while retaining a degree of non-specificity. In practical usage, this character is typically inserted when referring to a person without disclosing their full identity, serving as a substitute for their given name. The second character in the title (濕) simply translates to ‘wet,’ which seemingly leads back to the same semantic predicament as the English title. However, it is the sequential combination of both Chinese characters that furnishes perhaps most appropriate expression for capturing the essence of these sculptures: A certain wetness. Inclusive, evocative and immediate, this ekphrastic title describes a condition rather than an image or entity, conveying the intrinsic experience of Kim’s sculptures through a visceral vocabulary. III. Corporeal Attraction Without the visual means to readily apprehend either the form or medium of Kim’s recent sculptures, viewers must rely on peripheral senses to guide their perception. In some cases, this is unavoidable: maintaining a stable viscosity of the clay used in these works requires a constant temperature and humidity in the galleries that feels markedly different from other areas of the exhibition venue. The cool, damp, cavelike atmosphere that results from these environmental parameters is most prominent in the exhibition’s fourth-floor gallery, where reverberating gurgles, drips and other sounds compose a fitting leitmotif within the dimly-lit space. Furthermore, Kim incorporates a scent diffuser that releases an aroma of red cedar to precipitate an olfactory response that complements the natural earthy fragrance emanating from the sculptures themselves. In addition to appealing to viewers’ sense organs, Kim’s sculptures exude a commanding physical presence that is site-specific in the truest sense: each work responds to the particular dimensions and ambience of the exhibition space where it is installed. A double-height ceiling and mezzanine balcony structure that unites two floors of gallery spaces allows Kim to configure a vertical sculptural mass nearly seven meters tall, dwarfing viewers with its outsized scale; a more modest gallery space is bisected by a monolithic sculpture that spans the width of the room and forces viewers to squeeze through narrow gaps on either side; and the elongated fourth-floor gallery accommodates the largest of Kim’s recent sculptures, which stretches some twelve meters in length to unfold a durational encounter as viewers walk from one end of the gallery to the other. The overwhelming scale of the sculptures is perceptually magnified within each space, thanks to the impossibility of viewing the entirety of any of these works from a single vantage point. Kim’s monumental aggregations are confrontational and imposing, and they dictate the terms of engagement that viewers must abide by: namely, undertaking an ambulatory viewing experience that forges a direct physical relationship between the magnitude of each sculpture and that of the viewer’s body. This humbling and intimate corporeal correlation also arouses an instinctive consideration of the volumes concealed within these sculptures. Thus, as viewers continuously alter their position in relation to Kim’s hulking masses, these inanimate lumps of clay are increasingly envisaged as bodies themselves. From an anthropomorphic perspective, the most evocative aspect of Kim’s otherwise ambiguous sculptural forms is the tactile quality they manifest. Their leathered textures and brown hues approximate the distinctive complexion of animal hides, while the dewy sheen of moisture glossing their surfaces is not unlike the light layer of perspiration that appears after taking a long walk on a humid summer night. Indeed, it is the porous ‘skin’ enveloping these clay forms that imbues them with a familiarity that belies their amorphous silhouettes, whether as a moist membrane pulled taut to expose a ribbed armature or loosely draped over an indistinct interior structure. The haptic allure of this undulating strata that separates the inside and outside of Kim’s sculptures derives from the interplay of wrinkles and ridges that animates their glistening surfaces, creating an abstract topography of skin as a living landscape. IV. In Transition Time has a way of marking its passage, regardless of the subject or substance on which its traces are left. Just as skin becomes less supple and wrinkles deepen as people grow old, the world around us also undergoes constant physical transformation. Although the changes taking place in nature may appear imperceptible over the course of a single person’s life, in the context of geologic time these gradual mutations will eventually render the landscape as we know it unrecognizable. Such long-term changes in the planet’s geography can be largely attributed to the effects of water, a substance that functions both as a means for creation and destruction. At a micro level, water is essential for the growth of countless plant species, each of which plays a fractional role in the development of organic texture on the thin surface layer of the earth; in a macro sense, however, water operates as a disfiguring force through events such as glacial movement and erosion, unleashing a process that can transform stone into soil. At some point during these protracted geological processes, clay is created. A combination of decomposed rock particulate, minerals and water, clay is a transitional substance by virtue of its physical properties: malleable when moist, brittle when dry and sturdy when subjected to high temperatures. The mixture of pottery clay used to produce Kim’s new sculptural installations is fluid in consistency, yet thick enough so as not to drip or shift in position after being thinly layered on the surface of each work. As a viscous substance somewhere between a liquid and solid, this clay serves as a microcosm of the human and ecological geographies of Dandong, where pluralism and transience propose a dialectic of hybridity. Whether operating as a border or conduit, creator or destroyer, the Yalu River and its sedimentary matter are essential to Dandong’s landscape in transition, integrating disparate elements that give rise to a singular, integrated condition.
A New Level of Hylic Experience, 2020 Art Critic/ Namsoo Kim Plato called for the exile of poets, but in fact he himself talked about ‘Khora’ as a place for all creations and a space of hollowness, using his own poetic language. ‘Poetic’ is not converged with logos[words] only, and when combined with mythos[imagination] and pathos[energy], it makes the power of ‘chaos’ a reality. Chaos does not have a well-defined feature, making it impossible to be sensed, but is known to be God who enjoys dance and songs, and the latter would be nothing but a praise for ‘Khora’. “It’s the most mysterious of the mysterious”[玄之又玄]. Juree Kim’s exhibition Wet Matter is an installation of three artworks which seem to be breathing like a huge colossal creature. This surreal breath, exuding across all floors of the SongEun ArtSpace, was intended by the artist, and the form of viewing takes place by raising a basic question of whether the creature is alive or not and then approaching closer to its breath. We are constantly reminded of the question posed by anthropologist Gregory Bateson and biologist Jacques Monod—“When an alien lands on Earth, how to determine which is the creature and which is not?”—as well as the standards they suggested with regards to identifying analogous and homologous organs. However, in Kim’s oeuvre, soil and water have their intrinsic features as elemental media respectively, but when created in a new state based on a molecular combination, they definitely become irrelevant to the said standards. More specifically, the journey of this exhibition begins with the viewers walking towards an artwork seemingly like a Greek curtain (in its drastic form of ‘representation’ that Zeuxis and Parrhasios competed against). This work with folded decorations undulating until the bottom, doesn’t seem like a realistic representation, something close to reality, but rather hints us about the trick of an ambiguous language as suggested by the exhibition title. That is, the form of a curtain is suggestive of the ‘image’ as conventional visual object and displays an intention to brighten up/conceal ‘wet matter’ as something subconscious that goes beyond such image of visibility. Of course, the (non) sculptural weight of the artist seems to shift towards the latter, and yet it does not completely exclude durability or persistence as a visual object of ‘appearance’. That is, it has a characteristic of ‘Khora’ embodied by ‘wet matter’, intrinsic nature as hyle for all specific creations, and yet does not discard its status as a modernist ‘primitive’ object. Kim tries to keep a balance between this representational ‘appearance’ and ‘wet matter’ continuing to the upper gallery space. When meeting the second exhibited work in a state of suspended judgement with a phenomenological viewpoint, the viewer is reminded that the ‘wet matter’ constitutes a bottom-up connection starting from the curtain form on the first floor, realizing that such connection can be unlimited. This unidentifiable scale of soil-water mass displayed on the second floor is both a form and a content, which is hollow but seems to hold something inside to conceive all things. That is, the concept of ‘Khora’ makes its appearance on the second floor, as it melts the surface of the pile of earth, likening the surface to a breathing skin of an undefinable monster that is divine like Chaos or Di Jiang(帝江). Here already, the balance between ‘appearance’ and ‘wet matter’ is broken, as we are awakened to the invariability and incomprehensibility that this colossal, organless body consists of. “It is death to souls to become water; it is death to water to become earth; yet from earth is water born, and from water, soul.” (Herakleitos) The sculptural practice of Juree Kim can be summarized with the following keywords: soil, water, soaked in black, melting, extinction, return, house of existence, etc. As seen in Evanescent Landscape, which brought Kim to the foreground, the artist has revealed the cross-temporal boundaries between the past and the present, based on a material performance of sort, where the human history—especially the historical fate of modernism and post-modernist dilapidated architectural landscape and the architectures seen as the archive of times—melts down by the destructive power of water. These boundaries were of liminality —the realm of separation, reunion and demarcation—where a sense of extinction gradually progressed with like a proposition. The border areas were black sectors where soil had absorbed water, a realm where that sector made the bottom to collapse and serve as a creature of sort that moves to the top. It was a performance that dissolved as the wall structure or the body of objet in the space manually discarded the unique environment, community and subconsciousness of time. After the 1970s, when the Korean architectural law was revised, countless number of multiplex housing units with slab roofs were built. And the fact that most the these endlessly proliferating buildings were ‘architectures without architect’ or ‘architectures copying those neighbors’ resulted in the catastrophic characteristics and the constant movement of such catastrophes, where destruction is constantly accompanied by extinction. Those miniature buildings represented by Kim in a hyper-realistic, paranoiac, and compulsive manner were anonymous private houses, and therefore, as “houses of existence”, the symbol of such house, becoming the “living world” [umwelt] in itself was an architectural ‘monad’ of those times, with monad being the medium that mirrors the world. And that monad melting in water and vanishing and going back to its original ‘mud at sea’ seemed very critical of the civilization but also mired in creationism. This ‘mud at sea’, rather than consisting of decayed remains of dead fauna and flora, is a combination of soil and specific substance of water based on the mechanism of light. This was the argument featured in the 19th century Textbook on Natural Philosophy. Here, there still inhabits the idea of pre-modern or ancient materialism, and in this exhibition, Kim extensively involves the reactions of light. Just as the thesis “In the beginning, there was sound” goes, light together with sound also plays a decisive role in determining the historical fate of this seemingly misfortunate “mud at sea”. Therefore, the practice of cybernetics (technology and science exploring the process of homomorphic self-organization among animals, humans and machines) based on standards like analogous and homologous relations, in other words, the concept of media, which begins with the birth of media art following the late 1960s, is difficult to be valid for this exhibition. Rather, a more vast temporal movement, namely orogenic movement dating back tens and thousands of years or the process of climate change (including big floods) in a few decades time is immediately comes to imagination, intervening as cross-temporal attributes. It would be quite unfair to link this with the conventional terms like ‘product of imagination’ or of sublimity, but more accurately, should be approached as ‘aesthetics of propitious omen’. Propitious omen[祥瑞] is a concept that intrinsically inhabts the flow of time and determines the fortunes along that temporal trajectory: Is it is auspicious or ominous? “All living creatures originate from the fundamental mud, mud at sea.” (Lorenz Oken, 1809) Unlike modernism based on the perspective of Theoria—Greek word for knowing by watching- and the vision thereafter, the aesthetics of propitious omen questions the auspiciousness of change, when the hylic origin transforms from ‘Khora’ with passage of time. This is different from what is ‘sublime’. It makes us think about the value and the meaning of the process where the element returning to the ‘sea mud’ manifests a new subconscious creation from that ‘sea mud’. Being “auspicious” means experiencing the material epiphany from that non(sculptural) sculpture’s image amidst the flow of change. The exhibition Wet Matter guides the viewers until the third floor, who will then experience the signs of eccentric self-organizing life and vitality, seemingly drawing a breath, surrounded by soft lights and sounds. The dim lights, and surface texture gives the sensation as if walking under low gravity in an unknown universe, and a tension of possibly plunging into an altered state when letting go of consciousness…these are what constitute the experience of soil drawing its breath. So what is this ‘Khora’ Plato talked about? When savoring Juree Kim’s oeuvre, the concept seems to ultimately boil down to ‘darkness’. “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”(Genesis 1:2) Here, referring to the medieval painting that placed valuation on ‘darkness’ in between parenthesis, the characteristics of light cast over the surface of ‘darkness’ and the power held by the light in that darkness comes to full illumination suiting its character. This is not ominous, but inherently auspicious. This approach can be one of many ways in interpreting these works exhibited by Kim, which highlight water as a material whose combination with the element of soil provides life to creatures and the more profound nature of water thereunder. However, another point not to be overlooked when viewing the works is that the artist herself points to a specific topos as a source and process of this soil. Kim selected the landscapes of the Dandong region in China, where the wetland vegetation is referenced as a process of time, revealing and concealing simultaneously that the region is the aforementioned border area. The lines dividing the Korean Peninsula and Manchuria, Koreans and Korean-Chinese, and the united Korea and the two Joseons signify and indicate as to why these specific states of soil in this border region are present in the form of ‘wet matter’. This medium of soil—politics as topos and topos as politics—attests to the fact that the discrete assessment of historical values and the fulfilling practice of “always historicize”(Frederic Jameson) prevalent in the artist’s previous of Evanescent Landscape still remains moistly ingrained in her current works. As such, soil as a matter was produced throughout an arduous process of fermentation, maturation, vegetal mixing process, industrial process, and soil-soil antagonist reaction, to name a few. This is fundamentally different from the land art practiced by Robert Smithson. Using soil as material, he sculpted works in spiral shapes, which were submerged under the lake waters, dismantling the boundaries between nature and art, being no longer considered as objets of contemporary art. Juree Kim’s works show no point of convergence in terms of land characteristics, symbols, and semantic network associated with nature and are rather strongly mired in an extension of ‘darkness’ or amplification of something subconscious. Their meaning and significance tend to remain inside, not easily giving room for any linguistic capture. Therefore, given the unidentifiable and non-morphological forms, colossal scale, and mythos approach dislocating language, it seems like the ancient forms (that we’ve never experienced), the order of hylic creatures, and ‘ancestrality’ of Quentin Meillassoux dating back to the pre-‘Axial Age’ prior to the setting of current civilization, are all unfolding before our eyes. The topology of mise-en-scene created by the state of “never-drying wetness” seems to have placed the conditions of the beginning of universe on the temporal axis. The experience of viewing the exhibition, surrounded by overwhelming surrealism of surface, will with no doubt deliver a powerful cross-temporal epiphany.
Indian Ceramics Triennale, 2018 Juree Kim’s practice is about disappearance and ephemerality. Jurees interest in old architecture dates back to old Korean buildings that were brought down to construct buildings in glass and chrome. Her work comments on urbanization and the erasure of history. In her practice, Juree carefully constructs old buildings in clay, once dry, leads them to water where they meet their destiny of de-construction and disappearance. For Breaking Ground, Juree studied and researched multiple buildings, such as the Hawa Mahal, Amber fort, city palace and some industrial areas. She was struck by the beautiful patterns and architectural structures as well as saddened by the pollution and environmental issues of the city. Juree was also inspired by “Svargalok”, an 18thC Rajasthani miniature painting. The painting depicts the heavenly abode of the Gods with detailed architectural elements such as Chhatris, Baggaldhaarroofs, Jharokhasand arches. Juree draws from these sources to create her imagined city. Once the work is complete and dry, Juree allows it to collapse when it comes in contact with water. Juree says “As an artist, I cannot whatsoever, intervene in the process of the encounter between earth and water. It is the interactions between these two elements that creates my work”
Correspondence with Disappearing Landscape, 2017 Art Critic / Soyeon Ahn Unexpected landscapes fill the space completely. Pitch darkness and strong scent of mugwort, sporadic blinking of lights, identifiable sounds are all revealed immediately without conjuring up any scene. The corridor leading to the venue was so narrow that the viewer was subjected to face these ambiguous landscapes all by him/herself. Ambiguous due to the immeasurability of each landscape’s dimension. At the end of the road, the movement of abstract forms without substance constantly stimulates our senses, similar to the signals that we could detect from the overall landscape. Kim Juree’s (2017) is a landscape. It is linked to what the artist had been working on for years on end, the . This series(2011-2017) displays the process of demolishing diminished versions of actual buildings right after they were created; an attempt to grasp coincidental signals that could be sensed through the present landscape, beyond reality. Her first series depicted the Hwigyeong-dong area of Seoul which was going through urban redevelopment at the time. Kim made models of the would-be-demolished-houses out of earth and when the exhibition began, she would pour water onto the houses little by little. The viewers could observe how the houses slowly collapsed from the bottom. The series does not solely focus on the social issue of redevelopment. Rather, the artist talks about the memory that is implied by a certain landscape of reality, and the senses issued from unreal dimension of such memory. In this vein, faced with the establishment and extinction of particular forms that she had presented to us, we ironically develop a certain hazy nostalgia for the memory of the past time which we had never witnessed as yet. The interest on landscape which stemmed from the series, seems to have expanded to a more abstract level of idea in . In this exhibition where architectural landscape depicting a certain minimum nature of site has disappeared, Kim Juree gathered elements of landscape to make substitutes of extremely abstract time. They were like surreal mute signals sent from ‘discovered objects.’ For example, when she was traveling around a small European city, she found a plant with especially pale looking leaves so she had collected some. Back in Seoul, she had encountered this plant once again in a small alleyway in Seoul. She found out it is a wildflower called silver ragwort, and begins to grow it herself. Such accidental encounters in a totally different time and space acted upon her as phantom-like signals. From the uncanny situation in which a silver ragwort looks dead pale when alive but actually dies while going greener as ever, when watered too much, I could feel the context of ‘disappearing landscape’ which collapses by the force of water. Furthermore, the scent of dry mugwort that filled up the whole space and the sound coming from an unknown place amplify the never-solved contradiction of this landscape. Kim Juree had taken up residency in a remote place far from the city and observed wild mugwort that grew in abundance near the area. Amid unfamiliar scenery, she had to face her imagination of unreal dimension. This plant which is camouflaged by its strong scent as if it is hiding something, is in itself a system of signals. Like a riddle, the plant calls upon the primitive which lies in such unfamiliar landscape or disappeared memory, once again. The space is divided by various sound waves that are difficult to guess the origin of sound. As a correspondence with a certain universe many light years away, these dumbfounding sounds of imagination are like secret codes difficult to decrypt. It sounds like something burning, or at other times, like something growing and moving in a huge primeval jungle. When you turn your eyes from the landscape and see the form of constant flowing down in the corner, while hearing the overlapping signal sounds, you can feel a different sense awakened by such unfamiliar sound, in the collapsing scene. That is to say, when you start to think such sound is some kind of signal sent to us from a certain form that is vanishing in a very explosive manner, the dynamic sound waves become extremely abstract. At the same time, they could become the substance of the unstable signals that predict imminent extinction. The identity of such immeasurable unreal sounds, in fact, is the minute soundwave collected while the landscape of dry bits of buildings made of earth were collapsing when watered in the series. Such fine and secretive sounds issued by the whole process of growth and extinction are amplified in this exhibition, amid substances of other experiences. The amplified sounds criss-cross each other to newly conjure up the image of growth and extinction that lay dormant in the unfamiliar landscape. Just like the moonlight of a full circle that occasionally loses its shape to form a ripple temporarily on the surface of black water. In such moment of ripple, the artist could endlessly strike conversation about experiences in different times that hide in landscapes of reality, numerous signals sent from landscapes at the verge of vanishing from the realm of reality, and the magical sense of a subject that is able to correspond with such unreal events.
Metaphysics of Birth and Death, 2017 Art Critic / NaYeon Ku If there is anything that is invisible but extremely powerful in estimating existence, it is time. Time carries infinity as its essence even as it makes the world into something finite. And if that world is made of matter, time and matter can ultimately make the world exist or not exist. Kim Juri’s work is strongly attached to the metaphysics of existence. At its center is fundamental contemplation on birth and death. This implies the duality of time and matter in the properties of the material she has chosen, and allows the work, made of this material, to perform birth and death on its own. To the artist, the material has the primordiality of water, earth, air and wind, considered by ancient Greek philosophy to be the basic physical foundation of the world, and a natural vocabulary created together with time. Since the 2010s, Kim’s main motifs can be divided into the Ilgiil-saengmyeol series, which takes place through representation of landscapes, and the Hwigyeong (landscape scene), which deals with the birth and death of architectural structures. These two series are each linked to different dual situations. First, Ilgiil-saengmyeol creates an environment through the moment the artist directly encountered the landscape, and the image of that memory. This differs, however, from the approach of figurative and traditional art, in which the spectator relives the experience through representation of the experience. The work does not attempt to capture the slippage of existence encountered by her body and senses, and the instant, but soundly embodies the sensuous “state” of the landscape as a space of experience. As water, earth, grass and stones, which at one point in time belonged to nature, emerge in light inside the dark space, we are embraced by the sounds of the environment, changing so slightly that we hardly notice. Though the stage of this landscape is a union of senses regarding memory, and a complete scene, like the reflection clearly appearing on the dark water, it is in fact a landscape one layer beyond, reached transparently by the artist’s memory. Through it, we enter into the middle of the time of birth and extinction, prepared densely in a certain space. And this place is positioned between the two properties of time: the artist’s moment of experience, and the continuation of memory. There the atmosphere circulates with the scents of light, water and earth, and quiet dynamics take place as the water is gradually absorbed by the earth. But even while we are in there, we are unable to know that the voices heard from among the bushes imply our own exhaustion. The space of this landscape encompasses the history of both formation and loss, in an ontological state containing the inevitability of life, which takes place slowly and secretly. Therefore, Ilgiil-saengmyeol is a time of space simultaneously including experience, memory, reality and reflection, and its interior is filled with metaphors of slowly advancing birth and death. Such ontological revelation, seemingly a consistent introspection in her work, allows the work to transform into a physical reduction of the introspection. The Hwigyeong series represents architecture of various countries and lets spectators witness its process of melting down bit by bit, thereby implying the essential culmination toward which the world of solid objects is headed. The structures are constructed with clay of an appropriate texture, a mixture of earth and water. For example, in the case of Evanescent Landscape-Svarglok: Jaipur 2018, which she made in India, Kim started from an architectural structure of gigantic scale, modelled by combining a mythical place for an Indian god with an actual building. To achieve a sense of reality, Kim had to ardently research fact and myth, going through a meticulous process so as not to miss delicate details. At the very moment the artist has her architectural structure in its soundest state in the exhibition space, she slowly begins pouring water on the floor. As the puddle of water little by little soaks into the bottom of the structure, erosion begins. This procedure continues until everything melts down to a state of ruins, the original form of earth entangled with the debris of the building remains. The dual properties of the matter of creation, completed through its encounter with earth but also becoming the matter of destruction, which is intrinsic, not only represents the simultaneousness of life and death but also implies the causality of mortality, pursued by the existence of the world. Kim Juri gives the following explanation: The structures made of earth are eroded and melted down by the water, which is artificially poured. As soon as earth and water meet, I the artist cannot intervene in the process at all. The work takes place only through the interaction of the two. Water symbolizes life, but is also a threat to life. All living organisms need water, but sometimes water envelops everything, taking lives. In the work, “water” carries dual meaning as a destructor and a completer of the work. (From Kim Juri’s Artist’s Notes, 2018) From a certain moment, Kim’s work escapes from the control of the artist and is activated according to its own logic. But it is not possible to watch from beginning to end, the state of change it is heading for. What we experience is a gradual process of the architectural structure’s slow move toward its end—that is, a certain point in time not long from now. But whatever state of the work we encounter, the structure exists in the present while realizing both the past and the future. Therefore the sight of a beautiful object built over a long period of time slowly disappearing on its own is a melancholy event for everyone standing before it, yet a scene of the times we have become accustomed to in our daily lives, and an observation of the universal change in life that is taking place for us and the world. While the structure made by Kim is, in the end, a form extracted from the way the world exists, it is also a medium in which the principle of vibrating time can be confirmed. Hence, from the slowly changing and collapsing work we naturally come to think of our own bodies. This reminds me of Kim’s previous work Silent Invasion (2008), as the flow of thought her structures evoke in our bodies intersects with the direction in which her work advanced from the human body to architecture. And at the center of that intersection is the ontological question about being alive, of which the body and the object commonly serve as metonyms. Kim’s work gains its power through its execution of a practice, in place of mere ontological thought, on the world and our incarnation. This happens as the artist painstakingly builds the material conditions expected of art, and then goes through the painful process of giving up on them. The structure she has built can never be returned to its original state, nor does it pursue a sound completion. It is made to perish, collapses to be created again, and never remains in an unchanged state. But through this process, her work breathes time and gains life. The narrative of life taking place in the world she has built can advance toward extinction through its own life force. All the way from the physical properties of the material she uses for her work, to the arrival at its point of extinction, Kim’s philosophy of life is delicately expanded. We directly inhale the sounds of breath exhaled by her work, as if it were a solid organism, and confirm the loss of life moving minutely before our eyes. And this aesthetic experience may become a concrete moment of experience through the primordial point in her work—that is, the metaphysics of birth and death.
Kim, Juree 揮景;Evanescent Landscape-Qing Dynasty01:Xin Yang, 2016 Critic/ Wendy Gers Kim Juree is a contemporary artist whose oeuvre includes photography and ephemeral installations of buildings made in raw clay. Her disintegrating architectural forms evoke notions of transience in relation to built environments. In her capacity of Artist in Residence, she was invited to create work that engages with local architectural heritage. After extensive in-situ research into ancient and modern architectural forms, she chose to focus on a large manor house compound established in the late Qing dynasty, (ca. 1900—1911). Located in Xin Yang county, near Zhengzhou, this stately house is now abandoned, and awaiting demolition. The artist has carefully documented the 6 buildings that make up this compound. Her scale model displays various key characteristics of this home – notably the elaborate entrance, ornately carved stone window and door frames, and intricate wooden door and window lattices. These latter elements particularly captivated the artist, and she endeavoured to accurately transmit these sumptuous and fascinating decorative details. Noting that many ancient lattices illustrate advanced mathematical patterns, including the principals of Euclidian and transformation geometry, one is struck by the visual and intellectual ‘poverty’ of much contemporary architecture. The accompanying film evokes a previous work by Kim Juree. It’s title ‘Hwigyeong’ means ‘disappearing landscape’ in Korean and simultaneously refers to a district in eastern Seoul (South Korea) that is being redeveloped. Kim’s buildings are faithful reproductions of popular structures built in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. These vernacular homes and apartment buildings merge western brick elements with hybrid Korean elements in interesting ways. Sadly, these iconic architectural forms, that have not been studied by architectural historians, and are being systematically razed. They are being replaced by bland and anonymous office and apartment blocks that have no links with Korean architecture and culture. Kim Juree’s work Title dialogues eloquently with the Henan Museum’s exceptional collection of earthenware architectural models from Han and Tang dynasty tombs (206 BC – 906 AD). The interchange between these ancient tomb sculptures that are preserved for eternity, and this crumbling Qing dynasty landmark earmarked for destruction is vivid and poignant. The accelerated destruction of Kim Juree’s sculpture does not offer any easy solutions to the myriad of difficult questions concerning sustainable growth, and the respect of heritage in China’s current rapid transformation. Other sites investigated for this project include the Ersha Grinding Mill Factory, Zhong Yuan District, Zhengzhou; Liu Ling, Zhengzhou, an inner-city neighbourhood will be destroyed soon; and homes near Henan University in Kaifeng that were built in 1970s and 1980s by very poor families, and are now earmarked for destruction. Majewski, Miroslaw & Jiyan Wang. A Journey through Chinese Windows and Doors – an Introduction to Chinese Mathematical Art. Undated article. atcm.mathandtech.org/EP2009/papers_invited/2812009_17224.pdf Consulted Oct 25, 2016. 1/Other sites investigated for this project include the Ersha Grinding Mill Factory, Zhong Yuan District, Zhengzhou; Liu Ling, Zhengzhou, an inner-city neighbourhood will be destroyed soon; and homes near Henan University in Kaifeng that were built in 1970s and 1980s by very poor families, and are now earmarked for destruction. 2/Majewski, Miroslaw & Jiyan Wang. A Journey through Chinese Windows and Doors – an Introduction to Chinese Mathematical Art. Undated article. atcm.mathandtech.org/EP2009/papers_invited/2812009_17224.pdf Consulted Oct 25, 2016.
The Compressed and Revived Zone of Shift, 2011 Critic/ Sunyoung Lee Kim Juree’s houses show the slow collapse in time in a compressive manner. The house is made of earth and when water is added, it slowly erodes from the bottom due to gravity. House is one of the most common structure in the modern urban landscape with dense population, thus it can be a barometer of change in environment. However, in Kim Juree’s case, her first interest was directed to the internal issue of body. If the house is an extension of the body, one of the starting points of the work must have been the body that was slowly caving in. The body and its extension, the house, both primarily decline due to natural force but the artist questions about the renewal cycle of the house becoming ever so short. She brings in the social issue of asking the reason for such crazy destruction and reconstruction going on. Without even having a moment to ponder on ontological problems, the issue has directly jumped to the macro/microscopic problems of power that rule over routines. As sociological interest in urban change has been largely reflected in artworks in the recent times, the strength and density of the art world of Kim Juree had actually began from the ontological issue. Her works convey that only inherent critical mind embedded in herself would be able to maintain and strengthen the width and depth of the work, not from an external approach. This does not mean that the artist had done less work for basic document research or the process of reproduction. Her work is far from light satire or cynicism with a joyful twist and differs from critical approach shown in intellectuals’ ideological ideas about the social reality. She does not simply sympathize or feel pity about a reality far away from herself, either. It is not about like or dislike, right or wrong, it is the attitude of being so. The process of reproducing the outer wall tile patterns of an old house in perfection and then slowly making it collapse is no different from the violence found in our reality. If the houses were not built with such perfection, it could not have given us such intense feelings. The signification stems from such difference in drop. In 2009, during the time the artist had started her recent works, she had witnessed houses in the redevelopment area near her studio being destructed cruelly. The destroyed house, as if having suffered sudden bombardment, attracted her interest, especially the process of the house collapsing, and through her minimized houses made of earth, this process is displayed compressively so that it could be observed at a single sight. Due to the time interval of development plans, some areas have the destruction delayed but cannot avoid their destiny of soon disappearing, or having to disappear from this period of transition. Her earlier ‘Hwigyung’ series talk about the ‘volatilizing landscape’ she discovered from Hwigyung-dong landscapes which were the would-be redevelopment area. The recent ‘Scape_Collection’(subtitle of the show) exhibition which was inspired by the neighborhood where her studio is located and several other redevelopment area landscapes, portrays the Hannam-dong area. This area had been surviving with mostly small repairs, no big constructions, its primary structure and shape gradually undergoing change. This was probably possible due to the expectation of an eventual total destruction and redevelopment to build expensive villas or apartments, especially because the area has a splendid wide open view. The artist easily finds marvelous inventions of life, here and there from this area. This neighborhood sits on a hill and there are diverse forms of houses; a stairway-style house with 4-story on one side, single ground floor on the other side, houses closely juxtaposed to each other in ‘separate but together’ style without any outer walls, naturally formed houses which shaped themselves according to the terrain or ground shape. And in between these closely-knit densely located houses, there are steep alleys like capillary tubes winding around as in a labyrinth. In Kim Juree’s work, the traces of slowly changed brick houses can be found. These houses of similar style must have begun dominating this neighborhood’s hilly area one fine day. Artificial structures built according to a plan would go through naturalization and her work has compressed and revived this process. The disparate elements that have slowly transformed the homogeneous body are not morbid symptoms that should be hidden, they are emphasized as traces of formation that should be revealed. The old and narrow houses are captured as changes in space due to the time flow, as structures that are added, accumulated and increased. Following the curvy line of precipitous life, the scene of houses endlessly connected without even a little gap whatsoever is the continuum of shift itself. They have rhizome-like forms that grow like weeds with vitality. In the landscape photos that the artist had collected for her work, you can find electricity wires criss-crossing each other in a dizzy tangle and this also looks like small branches that branched out from rhizome. The structure of rhizome makes us feel lost, like in a maze but this maze structure also plays the role of barrier which protects from violence of shortest distance pursuing effectiveness with a lost purpose. The drawings on the wall show structures solely linked with railings. Different structures are linked like rhizome with different intervals. For some, this coincidental network looks like disorder which should be cleared out but for some others, it feels like a heteropian landscape that makes a contrast with the new order that would provide a utopia for merely the minority. These structures that have been added onto each other for a long term, without any plans in general, look somewhat without any principle but all of them are there for inevitable reasons. There definitely lies the reasons for it to be there. In this naturalized landscape, there is no such thing as surplus, like in the nature. The working process is meticulous as when building a house. There are certain cases where the 3-dimensional plan has to be drawn on the computer and then realized. The houses soon to be collapsed are made of white clay, into a close-to-real form. In the final step, water is poured over the houses on the opening day of the exhibition or the day before in order to slowly erode them from the bottom. The major work of this exhibition is the work of 7-8 houses stuck to each other, on an embankment. These houses that resemble each other but are slightly different like family members were based on actual houses in Hannam-dong. The house with no entrance nor exit, with only railings or the brick house that is being divided like decalcomania are examples of the method of proliferation. The dividing method like asexual reproduction conveys primitive and strong vitality. This illusionary model with the process of reproductive units does not have to be destroyed. It has a form of structure but it is already collapsed or symbolizes the force such as that of a phoenix rising from the crumbled broken pieces. Why does the artist focus on such shabby and destitute landscape? She must have understood that those landscapes betray the one and only objective notion of time and space. Multi-layered surfaces that spread out by following the direction of winding lines of life, go against the will toward dominant power which has a sole deep strong root and pillar, growing into a grid shape. The mesh of life has grown in size, delicately for a long period of time. Even though this mesh is not trash that should be totally removed one day, this kind of structure that has expressed unique experience of time and space is conferred only a temporary life by a power(authority) that approaches overwhelmingly like a tsunami. This is similar with the violence occurring toward art which tries to survive with its peculiar action in a society which does not acknowledge various values. Kim Juree’s works are the cases of other being on the side of the others. The water pouring act which accelerates the nature’s process does not limit its destroying effect on nature. The scenes of creation and termination of water and earth are not of nature but social landscape. The human society controls the natural power according to their criteria. The society accepts legitimacy and effectiveness for only one single power. Kim’s work portrays the places of life with concrete specificity engraved onto them disappearing due to the abstract universality. This abstract power is born and strengthened by the capitalistic tendency which concentrates power to the minority. The artist is repulsed by the immense flow of the attempt of eradicating the root of the lives of natives and planting the tree elsewhere. It is the trial of subjugating the other beings in the homogeneous system. The artist puts in relief the place in which the specificity of concrete life has melted, against the abstraction of the space where capital is the impetus. On the other hand, the process of these places melting down corresponds to the tendency of modern society in which space becomes time. The works which look like ships slowly sinking, express the process of implosion of space into time. Implosion concludes with the somewhat tragic method of collapsing but the minute mesh of life that the artist has revived through the works also imply the durability and resistance against the destructive power of time. Through drawings that connect shifts of the house exclusively made of railings or the architectural elements that compose a house, we learn the way the mesh of life is created. Collapsed houses leave broken pieces and vestige and they form a new structure when being attached together. It is not done by a unified plan. It is made by bits and pieces being added, there exists no notion of whole. The stimulative motif is the desire to go on with living this life despite imminent difficulties. If a planned city forms an organic whole, the parts would be, as Deleuze and Guattari refer to in Anti-Oedipus, specimen of death opposed to the organism which form a big matter. The small pieces that are attached despite the disparateness are not prosperity of life which would go on forever. They bear the premise of being conscious of death every moment in life. The pieces delay death by connecting with infiniteness of all directions. Kim Juree’s houses that emphasize coincidental network do not represent or signify something. What we can discover in her works is the connection that is continuous as being adrift or escaping. These various kinds of shifts would form resistance against the imminent collapse.