ART CITIES: Seoul-Doki Kim

Doki Kim takes a profound interest in the various layers of the world, including space and nature, society and culture, matter and energy, and time and space. Using immaterial media such as light, heat, gravity, and language, she creates works that explore the ‘phenomena’ that occur in the interaction of matter.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Gallery Baton Archive

Continually questioning ‘what’ we are and ‘how’ we exist, Doki Kim’s work is scientific, philosophical, sometimes poetic, and shamanic. Through her multi-media installations that operate in various ways, the artist invites viewers to open their senses and engage as a passionate interpreter of her work. “The Apple and The Moon”, Doki Kim’s solo exhibition title, stems from one of Newton’s anecdotes and indicates that even things with completely different attributes are linked by one identical principle. As Newton came up with the big world like the moon by observing a small world—an apple, the works introduced in this exhibition trace their connection, imagine or recite it by oscillating between the macro and micro universes. Doki Kim, who has produced experimental installations delivering her persistent exploration and interpretation of the mechanism of the world, unveils a new series containing her interests extended to extraterrestrial space. In this solo exhibition, Kim presents her representative works, which embody pixels of a low-resolution media device, a structural and spatial installation where melt paraffin coats over, and new moving images influenced by her pixel-based work. Throughout visualizing the elements—such as light, heat, and gravity—which give “situation” to “universe”—a physical place, she employs diverse non-artistic materials, including natural objects, industrial matter and everyday supplies. Kim sometimes relies on strict performative procedures to portray the hidden sides of the original properties of selected materials by combining and deconstructing them. The delicate breakup reveals where and what the objects originated from; the accumulation caused by the repetitive movement actively adjusts the volume of the outcomes and records the lapse of time. “Umbra” (2024) consists of LED display modules in the shape of a rectangular standing structure and dissembled pixels that establish a big circle of light while scattering over the floor. Each lamp, intertwined and dispersed, makes it difficult to discern the original image of the video. It creates a mesmerizing stream of light that is responsive to sound, suggesting an undisclosed pattern. In the video, whose sense of time and narratives are disturbed, the pixels, reverted into flickers, fail to be images but fragments reminding of an atom—a fundamental unit of a substance. Her pixel works initiated the investigation into the existence of temporality and narrative, passed through “A Scattering Time” (2019) and “Blue Hour” (2023), and have reached “Umbra” (2024) representing the reality of life—an illusion—in the more stereoscopic and preoccupying mode. “Partial Solar Eclipse” (2024) is a video series exploiting LED modules. Adopting low-resolution apparatus letting the viewer discern pixels shows that the work shares motif, concept, and context with “Umbra”. The modules irregularly arrayed at distance intervals play a medium role in allowing the audience to peek into the universe. The video showcases ordinary scenes and nature repeatedly appearing and disappearing while overlaying with astronomical space and time. It provides the visual play with perception in which the images, looking like a cosmic space and a planet at first sight, turn out to be a blazing flame and the surface of an apple, respectively. Thus, the images, overturning a hierarchy and confusing boundaries by crossing the micro and macro cosmoses, reflect Kim’s way of seeing the world. The two huge figures covered with dark blue paraffin of “To Night, From Night” (2024) look similar to giants or mountains. However, the small white hands emerge from the figures, seemingly stretched out towards each other, implying that they represent fragile and neglected presences, unlike their appearances. For Kim, ’Night’ is a crucial keyword often referenced in many of her works. Since “The Melting Sun in the Night” (2021), night has not been mere darkness but rather a dimension entirely disaggregated and replete with possibilities of being reborn.

Photo: Doki Kim, To Night, From Night, 2024, paraffin wax, dye, plaster, installation dimensions variable, © Doki Kim, Courtesy the artist and Gallery Baton

Info: Gallery Baton, 116 Dokseodang-ro, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea, Duration: 14/8-14/9/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, https://gallerybaton.com/