Moving between objects and space: the responsive sculpture of Kim Minae

Yoon Wonhwa (Independent Researcher)

Sculpture has recently been making a comeback in Korean art, following painting. A growing number of artists are calling themselves sculptors, researching new sculpture techniques and working hard to produce powerful sculpture works. Several special exhibitions have highlighted their work, either individually or collectively. But the term “comeback” implies that sculpture had disappeared, and this claim is too easily refuted. How many sculptures have appeared in our urban landscape since the Building Artwork Policy was introduced, in 1995? It can safely be said that the production of sculpture has never decreased in quantitative terms. But when it became a legal requirement to insert sculptures into the urban scenery in affiliation with buildings, the genre’s fate headed toward a sort of upside-down ready-made. Things that should have been works of art were apathetically produced and then neglected in non-artistic contexts where no one expected to see an artwork, evoking a sense of skepticism about the very nature of art among the few people who actually looked at them.

While the concept of creating a particular object known as an artwork, based on traditional aesthetic media such as painting or sculpture, cannot itself be wholly denied, it long ago started to be seen as somewhat obsolete. In Korea, video and digital media emerged as new areas of interest in the exploration of media at least as early as the 1990s, while there has been a growth in works produced using various conceptual approaches that go beyond medium-centric thought to reconsider the divisions of art itself. At the same time, art galleries have changed from specialized and exclusive abodes of artworks—as distinct from everyday objects—to open stages, allowing the symbolic, architectural and performative arrangement of various heterogeneous items. This is a well-known story. Relatively less discussed is the fact that, within this changed artistic environment, creating sculpture has suddenly become an enigma. Many artists who majored in the genre have avoided describing their works as sculpture, even when these works are indeed three-dimensional; even more frequently, they have expanded their work into media installation or changed direction altogether and moved into video work.

It was in this climate that Kim Minae majored in sculpture, in the mid-2000s. Over the past 10 years or so, while sculpture as an artistic topic sank below the surface and then came back up, she has constantly explored sculptural questions. But her approach is far from being one of dominating spaces with monumental masses that redefine the concept of sculpture. On the contrary, she recognizes a specific space for exhibition as a mold and pedestal of sculpture, from which an eccentric object is drawn to subtly disturb the order embodied in the space. In her works, sculptural elements have the capacity to open and reveal the gaps between objects and space. They redefine sculpture as a new issue, unconstrained by its traditional media—the totality of materials and convention to create an artistic volume.

Kim Minae is known for work that cleverly latches onto the architectural order which is physically constructed to program the types and ranges of events in the space, then throws it into confusion, altering spatial perception in unexpected ways. A typical example is Relatively Related Relationship (2013), a work in which Kim borrowed railings as a form and installed unidentified railing-type structures in various places throughout the exhibition hall at MMCA Gwacheon as part of the New Visions New Voices exhibition (2013). Railings are normally devices used to limit movement and prevent injury at points where changes in level occur, such as flights of steps. But Kim’s railing-shaped structures posed as safety barriers, preventing access to works to protect them from damage by viewers, or confusingly blocked lines of flow, or guided the eye along imaginary lines of movement, as if a path led up beyond the ceiling, in the absence of an actual staircase. Such works reminds of the tradition of the institutional critique, such as shutting exhibition rooms completely or smashing up the floor, and of the phenomenological approaches that cause viewers to newly perceive the exhibition venue as a purely physical space. Yet they do not yield easily to such reductive classifications.

Just as Kim’s objects belong in no specific category and constantly evade our grasp, so do her spaces. At first, the artist seems to have recognized the space as a physical and systematic institution, both an external environment and a framework already internalized inside her, then attempted to explore this confining space through sculpture. As an MA student, she attempted several works made from boxes featuring cutouts exactly the right shape for holding specific sculptures. In some (030516, 2005), the sculptures are inserted into the cutouts; in others (040111, 2004-7), they have come out of the boxes and are staring blankly at the empty holes from which they have emerged. Finally, the sculptures disappear completely, leaving several hundred empty boxes with cutout profiles of figures waving hello or goodbye (Hi-Bye, 2006-7). The link between objects and space is not one of ping-pongesque reciprocity in a single place, but one that advances constantly to new places and changes constantly into different forms.

There is more than one way to move from here. Kim could have gone beyond sculpture, or left art altogether for the world outside. She didn’t, but that does not mean we should jump to the conclusion that she failed, ultimately, to escape the yoke of the system. Rather, Kim has driven her own vehicle of space and objects, a strange contraption with a wheel on one side and a brace on the other, tottering around wherever she wanted to go. Though she herself does not claim to have been exploring sculpture until now, she has maintained a constant awareness of the rules that define the sculptural, at once reflecting them and working to find oblique angles of escape from them. Because each of her works began with different, externally-determined conditions, it is hard to sum up her entire trajectory in a single chronicle. But Kim has developed types of technique in response to the contexts of their work, and it is possible to trace the paths of these types as they evolve through constant repetition, or undergo unpredictable transformations.

First are works that send contradictory signals between movement and stasis; works that, put simply, represent situations of stalemate. By adding to an existing space a minimal number of objects imitating the architectural elements around them, Kim creates situations where all directions are open but we do not know where to go (Blind Alley, 2010), or where we are given a clear direction in which to go, but no way of doing so (Distant Stairway, 2011). The objects she has introduced are thus similar in outer appearance to functional objects but useless. This effect finds its most extreme expression in Rooftoe (2011), an imitation column, added below a truss where no column is needed, with a wheel at its base. At first glance, the work looks like a column that must stay in place, without moving, but it does not actually need to be there. It stands there, neither a proper object nor a meaningful architectural element, while the red wheel at its base serenely bears the burden of twofold redundancy.

This approach, mainly formed at Kim’s college while studying in the UK, was both a response to spatial programs for producing work and training artists, and an exploration of the impossible position for sculptures as neither everyday items nor architecture. Moving further towards works for exhibition halls, the self-denying qualities of objects grow stronger. Here, we find structures that fit perfectly into the square corners of the room when stood up, but have only one leg, with a wheel at its base, so cannot stand up by themselves (A Set of Structures for White Cube, 2012), works made from three connected wooden crutches that can stand up by themselves but have lost their original function of movement (Free-standing Sculpture, 2012) and works that invalidate their own specificity by accepting all the functions and meanings of objects that are legally allowed into the exhibition venue (Golden Pillars – Table, Plinth and Object, 2012).

The artist did not stay for long in this blind alley in which objects had to assert and prove themselves. By this time there were already plenty of venues that, unlike classical White Cube with its principles of pure space exclusively for exhibiting artworks, upheld the historical character of their locations and the architectural qualities of their buildings, opening themselves to extra-artistic contexts. This provided Kim with room for new experimentation. She focused on making objects abandon the will to move or its opposing lethargy, physically or virtually reflect and multiply the spaces in which they were placed. To this end, she introduced walls and curtains, windows and mirror frames, or simply flat objects of various sizes, transparencies and reflectances. The forms of fake windows recur with particular frequency. Kim installs framed canvas and lighting in the shape of windows on the inside and outside of an external venue wall (Behind the Scene, 2012), or hangs a mirror on the front and back of a partitioning wall between two identical police cells (La Reproduction Interdite, 2012), creating the illusion of a window. Such devices, as intended by the artist, not only deceive the eyes of viewers but function as a type of public screen, inducing viewers to imagine what lies beyond them—spaces that do not actually exist and therefore cannot be confirmed.

Strictly speaking, these were not completely new experiments but repeat attempts at the approach taken by Kim in 2008 at her first Seoul solo exhibition, Anonymous Scenes. But while in 2008 she focused on materially presenting the spatial illusions she had experienced around her, and the fantasies they triggered, within the exhibition space, her works this time adopted a structure that was comparatively open to the unknowable memories and imaginings of those passing through the space at that moment, including the artist herself, or those who had occupied it in the past. This approach was further solidified in 2013’s Richard Smith, a one-day project in collaboration with curator Kwon Hyukgue. For this work, based in a project space at a shopping arcade in a residential area due for redevelopment, Kim posited an imaginary figure who had lived in the neighborhood and created ambiguous situations that allowed viewers to imagine meeting him. Here, the artist and viewers were placed in the same predicament of having to conjure an image of an unknown being based on only a small handful material remains. Ingeniously, the entrance to this space, with its shutter half pulled down, bore a strong similarity to Continuous Reflection, a work displayed at Kim’s 2008 first solo exhibition, in which the artist installed mirrors on the exhibition space wall and pulled shutters partially down over them, reflecting an earlier experience in which she had mistaken the corrugated pattern on a wall for a shuttered door. To those who remembered the 2008 work, this produced the fantastical feeling that the space beyond the mirrors back then had transcended space- time and opened out in London.

Creating such virtual leaps and jumps has been a key driving force in Kim’s subsequent works. The huge pink and black rubber balls that appeared at her at her second solo exhibition, Thoughts on Habit (2013), implied a new kind of motility, able to roll or bounce off anywhere. These elements appeared repeatedly in subsequent works, changing form into guises such as immaterial light-based images (Black, Pink Balls, 2014), graphic surfaces stuck to exhibition space walls (Conditional Drawings, 2015) or small, hard snooker balls (Black, Pink Balls, 2018). Just as divining the future in scattered rice grains is closer to resolving compulsive anxiety about a specific future possibility than to actually reading the future, these balls deliberately introduce randomness, rather than being mechanically subordinated to the given conditions and responding routines of the artist’s work.

Recently, Kim Minae has focused not on physically occupying space but on emptying it as far as possible while evoking strange thoughts, impressions or instructions that swell like phantoms within it. In her 2018 exhibition GIROGI, she used unexpected methods to transform the exhibition space into a kind of moving image. Generally, white outlines of birds that appear fat in comparison to the size of their wings are expanded to fill the walls, irrespective of their original sizes. Moving light and sound give the impression that the birds move momentarily though, of course, this is not actually the case. While, in several senses, the question of how sculptural things could move is one that ran through Kim’s previous works, GIROGI offers the most recent answer. Sculpture remains in a liminal space between agoraphobia and claustrophobia, leaving us uncertain how to feel. But within this space, it moves endlessly. Whether we must call the results of these movements sculpture or see them as the invention of another medium, has yet to be decided. It seems, perhaps, that the artist wants to leave it undecided for as long as possible.

Under the Shadow of Wild Geese

Yoon Wonhwa (Independent researcher)

History of Modern and Contemporary Sculpture in Korea by Choi Taeman (a rare book worthy of that title) begins with Rainer Maria Rilke’s assertion that a sculpture is “an object that could exist for itself alone.”¹ Implying the desire for a specific yet universal type of sculpture, born from the traditions of modern sculpture and the historical conditions of Korea in the twentieth century, this declaration presents itself as an axiom, commensurate with the solid status of sculpture at the turn of a new century, when the themes that had been so eagerly explored in the expiring century—from the identity of Korean art to the essence of sculpture—seemed to have lost their gravitas. In truth, however, this idea is not entirely self- evident in the way of statements like “painting is a painting.” Whereas painting is posited as a medium in the strict sense that it mediates between a painting hand and a seeing eye, sculpture is posited as the perplexing task of manifesting “an object that could exist for itself alone.” Simultaneously too vague and too strict, this conception almost inevitably results in a self-aggrandizing myth. Why should we strive to satisfy the questionable demand of sculpture to this day? This problem is generally handled in one of two ways. The first way is to make an object without calling it a sculpture. The second way is to make objects according to your own definition of sculpture.

Kim Minae chose neither path. For her, sculpture is like a ghost that cannot be eradicated, because it does not exist in the first place. If sculpture is something that occupies space like other objects but still looks distinctively self-sufficient and self-supporting, then even a human body could qualify as sculpture. Thus, sculpture should have a presence like humans, yet without being confused for a human. Discovering a body that does not belong to us has been a recurring theme of sculpture. Indeed, sculpture’s capacity for objectifying our anxiety, illusions, curiosity, desire, and hatred for the human body is one of the reasons that it has endured. But Kim Minae is not stimulated by the reverberation between humans and objects, but rather by the instability of the object itself, which loses its original identity by being swept up in human instability. Through the idea of sculpture, ordinary objects are suddenly seen as lacking sculptural properties, while objects claiming to be sculpture are placed in a state of nervous judgment. What was I supposed to be? What else could I have become? Exploring such existential questions of things in a theatrical way, Kim Minae transforms sculptures into allegorical objects.

Theater of Things That Seem Like Something Else (But Are Not)

Allegories say one thing while signifying something else, thus triggering a series of leaps with no end. When sculpture becomes allegorical, it does not have to be taken a face value, even when it seems to be grumbling about its own dilemma. As odd assemblages that modulate or imitate something that already exists, most of Kim Minae’s works actively respond to the question, what else could I have become? However, these objects do not ignore the question, what was I supposed to be? Indeed, the latter question is directed not only at the sculptures themselves, but also at the exhibition space and the visitors. Through the repetition of these riddles, the entire venue of sculpture is surprisingly transformed into a theatrical performance by a wandering troupe of objects. Not being limited to human forms, the versatile players can easily be recast to play any number of roles, not only as actors, but also as props or the stage itself. However, given that they are constructed in accordance with the specific context of the exhibition space, they must be repeatedly broken down and rebuilt for the next performance. Thus, the objects are virtually consumed as disposables.

The sculptural theater of Kim Minae is operated by the dreams and passions of these objects. In Black, Pink Balls (2014), objects that she had used or produced for previous exhibitions were surrounded by tents, resembling an excavation of the tomb of an elephant. Pink lights twirled around the space like the spirits of the objects resting their heavy bodies, or the flashing lights of guard posts keeping them from crossing the line. The pink will-o’- wisps, which simultaneously illuminated and obscured the objects, floated indifferently across the flustered audience, who were unsure where to put their eyes and feet in relation to the tent, which was marked with a sign that said “DO NOT ENTER.” In their confusion about how to respond to this instruction, however, the audience had already become part of the theater separating the theater from the viewing area, the tent and lighting instead created a new space beyond the mirror, which was almost identical to an exhibition gallery, but not quite. The exhibition was adjourned by the objects, which seemed to reject their assigned roles and positions. As if they were not yet ready, or had been ready a long time ago, the objects met people with disinterest, as if audience had arrived at the wrong time.

Refusing to be passively placed in a space to be compared to other objects, Kim Minae’s objects reject the general order both of objects and of space. Through this shared orientation, they selectively renovate whatever space they happen to occupy, becoming semi-architectural performers that move through the gaps between objects and spaces, as if demonstrating the route for evacuation or attack. In fact, the objects themselves do not actually move. The only kinetic element is the lights, which apply silent pressure to the objects, emphasizing their inactivity. In GIROGI (2018, meaning “wild geese”), the gallery was lit by rotating lights that seemed to have caused all of the objects to disappear, with only the sound of flapping wings remaining. As if to commemorate the missing objects, images of plump birds embossed on the walls seemed to move ever so slightly, although that was obviously impossible. In such ways, Kim Minae’s theater stages the almost hopeless dream of things that become what they are not, elevating to a higher plane. Their arrested actions unfold like a slapstick comedy performed with a serious expression. In trying to assume the status of art, they continually guess wrong, like a comedian who cannot find the keyhole, trying one spot after another, never realizing that the object in his hand is not even a key.

Although the gestures of these objects inevitably overlap with images of the artist who manages them, they are not anthropomorphized. In fact, they resemble humans by deviating from the idea of being human. What appears and disappears in the space is not a body with a face that expresses itself, but rather a partial object that uses the space itself as its body, like a bizarre crutch. Indeed, Kim Minae once made a wooden structure that looked like three connected crutches, which she called Freestanding Sculpture (2012). The crutches, which are artificial limbs that cannot stand on their own, become a self-reliant structure, supporting one another. Losing their original function of supporting a person’s movement, they became a dilapidated monument to themselves. In an effort to assert their self-reliance, the crutches keep changing their appearance, from a table to a pillar, a pedestal, and even a mop, but these deficient attempts at rehabilitation only serve to emphasize their uselessness. Sculpturally defective objects often get stuck while trying to figure out how to transition to the correct state. A crutch for a wheel(rather than a foot) might take a hilarious fall, causing laughter. But the next scene, in which the crutch prevents another crutch from falling, is not the least bit funny.

When History Becomes Future

Where can a theater of objects go, when the objects refuse to comply with the ethics of everyday goods, sculptural conventions, traffic regulations, or architectural rationale? One imminent possibility is to become history. While this might sound boring and self-evident, the path to such a future is unexpectedly invisible. What type of vehicle is required to protect the objects as a collection of memory as they seek asylum in the future? Where would this lead them? One possible answer is Sculpture on Wheels (2018), another type of self-monument that imprints objects’ irregular orbits around the idea of sculpture. Notably, this work derived directly from Kim’s previous installation A Set of Structures for White Cube (2012), which consisted of wheeled crutches that could only stand by being propped up in the corners of the gallery. For the later work, Kim created a new cross-shaped prosthetic that enabled the imperfect single legs to lean on one another, before turning their self-supporting assemblage into a transparent plastic sculpture. While the original structure remained in ambiguous form, with only the red wheels retaining their conventional function, the resulting object had a furtive mobility, allowing it to merge with any surroundings, or even to make an escape.

Notably, this work was produced as part of a special program in which artists were invited to renovate and re-install one of their previous works from the museum’s collection.² The original work was in storage, having already been absorbed into the government- managed history. With the help of Kim Minae, however, it briefly escaped that history, allowing her to make a plastic copy. But this newly materialized afterimage was quickly ingested back into the museum system, with a new set of memories inscribed in the meantime, like a tattoo. It is now an unnamed object that stands and partially blocks the right entrance of Kim’s exhibition for the Korea Artist Prize. Every object in this exhibition has erased its own name and now joins in a new chorus of greetings, like an ensemble singing in the round. Reflecting the given space and bending one another, they oppose the gravity of the art museum as mausoleum. The space allotted to Kim for this exhibition included the stairwell between the ground floor and the lower level, with traffic between the two floors being restricted so as not to disrupt the permanent exhibition upstairs. Kim decorated the dead end of the stairway with a red carpet cut in the middle, accompanied by an old song that sounds somewhat sinister. In this area, where the evacuation route has been blocked, the play of objects resumes.

First, three cubes have broken loose from the stairwell, which has now become useless. The cubes are modeled after the three entrances connected to this stairwell, thus representing a life-size sample of the architectural space of the museum and an extra component that changes the space. Equipped with handles and wheels that are unlikely to be actually used, these cubes claim to be mobile, but they merely confuse the audience by obstructing or reflecting the surroundings within mirrors or white surfaces. By disrupting the gaze and movement that the museum naturally imposes, this sabotage temporarily neutralizes the invisible boundaries distinguishing what should be seen from what need not be seen. In this renovated space, other objects come in, one after another, until it becomes difficult to tell the featured works from supplementary items either assisting or hindering the exhibition. Some objects that take the stage initially seem to be imitating something else, only to look clownish when the association ultimately fails. The performance does not seem to follow any predetermined script. Instead, each set of loosely bound objects around the three cubes acts like the stage curtain of a play.

Like the three ghosts from A Christmas Carol, the objects in this exhibition seem to act out situations that either have happened in the past or could happen in the future. In a way that diverges from the usual history of art, they represent the fragments of collective memory shared by objects, with the museum as their destination. Rather than certain objects going through certain situations, they represent patterns in the lifetime of objects that were specifically made for an art exhibition. Reenacting the collective memory, the objects examine the conditions under which the repetitions occur, as well as irregular phenomena that could emerge in the process. The objects ask questions, like how was I made? What can I identify and compare myself to? What shall I become? Through such questions, the objects transition from competitive relationships, in which they desperately flaunt themselves, to cooperative relationships that explore their shared destiny. If this transition ultimately leads to sculpture, it might be valid not as an ideal to be blindly pursued or discarded, but as a catalyst for inducing the unexpected resurrection of objects.

Reversing Hell

Through the left entrance that leads to the stairwell, the first cube appears. A tall box is decorated with hanging bands of gray adhesive, imitating the red carpet, and coated with a layer of glossy paint. Near the box is a pair of open paint cans, with a brush still inserted. Reminding us of the many objects inside a museum that are not considered to be art, this plywood structure is built in the manner of a freestanding display wall or pedestal, although it is too tall and thick to serve either purpose. Interestingly, these large dimensions, which prevent the box from serving a practical function, seem to have been made to suit the high, wide space of the museum. It must have been constructed in this very space, and will likely be dismantled here when the exhibition is over. Although the box succeeds in visualizing itself as a self-monument, it ultimately fails to save itself, and is thus relegated to become a futile memorial to the exhibition objects that are waiting to be taken apart.

The second cube and its derivatives are scattered near the central entrance, passing under the stairwell. The cube is about the same size as a small studio apartment, as suggested by the slight indentations indicating the possible positions of doors and windows. While much larger than a person, the cube is still dwarfed by the high ceiling of the gallery. As a conspicuous criterion showing the difference in scale between a museum and a standard living space, this white cube reminds us that the objects here are larger than they seem. Imagining what it could be in reality, the cube changes its appearance to a low platform with seats and an artificial lawn. Even so, the space is probably too small to accommodate a group of people chatting or playing together. The relative sense of size between art and reality continues to fluctuate. The righteous objects of the artist are too big to enter the house, but too small to change the world. In the end, they remain materialized signs representing something other than themselves.

Finally, in the extension of the right entrance, there is the third cube, which is the largest and most daunting of the three. Adorned with decorative molding and bearing three shapes draped with loose grey cloth, it looks like the pedestal of a statue prior to the unveiling. The shapes appear to be birds that are about to take flight in three different directions. Of course, we know that they cannot fly away, even if the cloth is removed. As an altar for wild geese that cannot fly, it corresponds to the transparent eagle trophy on the opposite side of the gallery, thus repeating the symbols of art and power that are endlessly reproduced and the self-representation of art, as shown in Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles (1968– 1972) by Marcel Broodthaers. However, when approached purely as an image, before the symbol, the three flightless birds looking down from a high altar recall the three spirits with their heads lowered atop Auguste Rodin’s La Porte de l’Enfer (1880–1917). They dance atop the entrance to another world, but the entrance, which does not open or close, is not actually a door, but a cluster of objects.

According to Alenka Zupančič, tragedy and comedy are opposing strategies for facing the human condition; while tragedy internalizes unresolvable intervals between the infinite and finite as painful self-destruction, comedy extends life by externalizing the indestructible vanity of human beings.³ What happens to those who fail to become what they are supposed to become? They go to hell. The wild geese ask, “Is this hell?” The audience, on the other hand, asks, are the wild geese immortalized as tragic subjects who inevitably fail in their pursuit of their ideals? Or are they ineradicable as comic objects that boast as if they truly exist on another level? Instead of a door that does not open, the altar to the wild geese lights up the exhibition space with a large mirror. The space beyond the mirror reflects a series of illogical images derived from the artist’s previous works and past exhibitions in that space. Fortunately, on a clear day after the pandemic has lessened, the blue sky and people passing by could also be seen. We are here at last.

1 Choi Taeman, History of Modern and Contemporary Sculpture in Korea (Seoul: Art Books, 2007), 15. Quotation taken from Rainer Maria Rilke, Auguste Rodin, trans. Jessie Lemont and Hans Trausil(New York: Sunwise Turn Inc., 1919).

2 For the exhibition Extended Manual (Nam-Seoul Museum of Art, 2018–2019).

3 Alenka Zupančič, The Odd One In: On Comedy (Cambridge, London: MIT Press, 2008), 53–58.

An Ellipsis, or Several Periods

Kim Hongki (Art critic)

“It is also well worth notice that, although mourning involves grave departures from the normal attitude to life, it never occurs to us to regard it as a pathological condition and to refer it to medical treatment. We rely on its being overcome after a certain lapse of time, and we look upon any interference with it as useless or even harmful.” — Sigmund Freud, Mourning and Melancholia, 1915.

1. Hello

Kim Minae greets you with a friendly “hello,” but that is all she says. Other than “hello”(the title of this exhibition), the only messages from the artist are the captions of the works, which do not even have conventional titles. Instead, each work is assigned a serial number, along with a caption that dryly and precisely conveys some basic details of the works, such as their material and size. Assuming that the listed materials and dimensions correspond to the actual works, these captions are little more than a tautology. Each caption directly translates the physical properties of the work into letters and numbers, rather than conveying a subjective message with new information or meaning. Perhaps the serial numbers of the works (ranging from 1-1 to 5-1) are a passcode that unlocks the principle behind the composition of the exhibition, but if so, no additional clues are offered to help us decipher it. One cannot help but feel a little embarrassed looking at a “table of contents” that contains only the numbers of chapters and subchapters. In any case, before closely examining the exhibition, the only message from the artist is “Hello,” a casual greeting.

As we know, a greeting does not contain any substantial meaning; it is just a signal of the beginning of a certain relationship, without stipulating the nature or contents of that relationship. No one can predict whether a relationship that begins with “hello” will progress into friendship or catastrophe. Thus, even if a greeting was a message, it would be an empty message, or “zero degrees of a message.” A greeting is simply a gesture of (re)confirming the formal structure for a new or existing relationship. It is a moment of structural recognition that creates the frame of the relationship before filling in the contents. By the way, who exactly is Kim Minae greeting? With whom has she decided to start a new relationship? In light of her previous works, we might expect that the other party is the exhibition space itself. For the past ten years, Kim has been presenting works with a sculptural methodology, savvily acknowledging, exposing, and transforming the architectural structure of the exhibition space. Only after greeting the architectural space of an exhibition does she begin to conceive her works. However, her greeting does not stop there. In direct response to the exhibition space, she installs sculptural devices that act like parasites, changing the structure in some way. Then, after setting the changed structure as a new default, she adroitly greets the space anew with a “hello” in order to pursue another sculptural intervention. With this in mind, the “table of contents” and serial numbers from this exhibition might represent Kim’s attempt to give this superimposed “hello” its own order. Although the only message from the artist is “hello,” this message is repeated and reiterated multiple times.

2. Manuscript Paper and Graph Paper

In the beginning was “hello.” Kim Minae’s world did not originate from nothing, but from setting a basic spatial default. None of the spaces in her world can exist without spacing. Rather than a blank piece of writing or drawing paper, her world is a piece of squared manuscript paper, with lines and squares to guide penmanship. Even with no writing on it, the surface has already been divided into hundreds of square units. Or perhaps it is graph paper, with a space divided into millimeters, with no drawings or graphs yet written on it. In her first solo exhibition Anonymous Scenes (2008), Kim Minae presented her Manuscript Paper Drawing series, which featured writings on manuscript paper with some of the squares cut out or blacked out. By concealing or removing the contents, Kim found an innovative way to evoke the spatial structure that is presupposed by writing. On the other hand, Kim’s 2010 work Conundrum consisted of a large object resembling a telescope, with a mirror and graph paper attached where the lens should have been. Anyone who looked into the telescope expecting to see magnified objects was surprised and perhaps frustrated to see graph paper instead. Rather than presenting the enlarged shape of an object, the artist showed the implicit grids that precede our perception of objects.

For Kim Minae, the architectural space of a museum is like squared manuscript paper or graph paper. Prior to an exhibition, she greets the empty space, which does not contain any artworks, but has already been divided into various grids and dimensions. Before conceiving her art and exhibition, she must first introduce herself to the architectural structure—i.e., the walls, floor, ceiling, windows, doors, stairs, lights, etc.—which she views as a three-dimensional piece of graph paper. As opposed to the areas where people typically congregate, Kim focuses more on the architectural elements with highly functional purposes, such as hallways and staircases, which tend to be the most overlooked parts of an exhibition space. She keeps her eye on the blind spots that are easily ignored, despite their legitimate role in dividing or connecting the space. Because they often go unnoticed at the conscious level, these elements are like a frame that unconsciously limits and guides human senses and movements. In Rooftoe (2011) and A Set of Structures for White Cube (2012), Kim installed prosthetic objects resembling crutches to support the ceiling and stand in the corner of the space, respectively. For Black Box Sculpture (2014), she placed the “alter ego” of an escalator next to the original. By acting as a parasite to these unconscious frames, she extends and replicates the overall space in strange ways.

Kim Minae’s works stem from her recognition of various types of frames: manuscript paper as the frame for writing, graph paper as the frame for mathematics, and architecture as the frame for human life. At the individual level, a frame is revealed in the habits that unconsciously define a person’s thoughts and actions, while at the social level, the frame takes the form of collective habits, such as conventions and culture. At the level of art, the frames are the institutions that monopolize aesthetic evaluations, including art museums. By actively intervening with such frames, Kim Minae’s art reveals the personal habits, social conventions, and art institutions that are hidden right in front of us. Slightly tweaking the gaps in the rigid grids, she makes a gesture of resistance, evincing a spatial metaphor for the duality of the self, the dialectic of society, and the fate of the avant-garde, all of which are “parasites” on the frames that refine the attitude of compromise.

3. Through the Looking-Glass

Fittingly, for the Korea Artist Prize 2020 exhibition, the space that was allotted to Kim Minae includes part of Gallery 2, which happens to contain a complex network of square units and grids that are much more complex than the typical “white cube.” The space is divided into two sections with different heights by a central wall, which is penetrated by three large hallways and the stairs leading to the upper floor. Notably, these hallways and stairs are the parts of the space that Kim Minae greets for the first time. Sitting in the exhibition space like blocks that have been removed during a game of Jenga are three large cubes that seem like they could fit into the three respective hallways. As a result, the three hallways that visitors unconsciously presume as the default of the museum space suddenly seem to have been artificially formed by separating the three cubes from that middle wall. Meanwhile, the stairs, which are temporarily blocked to restrict the traffic between Kim’s exhibition and the upper floor, are adorned with a red carpet, as if welcoming attendees of a gala event. Perking up these peculiar conditions, Billy Joel’s song The Stranger (1977) is played. Finally, boxes of light that resemble elongated windows shine diagonally on the walls of the stairs, running parallel to the steps.

In her response to the space, Kim Minae reflects various structures in unexpected ways, generating a type of “alter ego.” The result is a strange mirror effect that does not provide a true reflection of the divided space. Indeed, several of Kim’s previous works have incorporated actual mirrors, including Continuous Reflection (2008), which was presented at her first solo exhibition, and the aforementioned Conundrum. In this exhibition, mirrors have been attached to the three cubes, reflecting the hallway. Of course, every mirror serves to expand space, express self-reflectivity, and juxtapose reality and illusion, but Kim’s use of mirrors should be understood from a broader perspective. Indeed, her unique mirror effect does not even require real mirrors. She often forces an object to confront its image, which has been conspicuously reversed or altered in some special way. Through her command of this mirror effect, the hallways are perceived as negative spaces, the inverse of the empirical cubes, while the flesh of the stairs is separated, such that the frame(or bones) is changed into a reflective window. Consequently, Kim’s extraordinary mirror is both a mould and an X-ray.

In her third solo exhibition, Black, Pink Balls (2014), Kim Minae invited visitors to step through the back of a mirror. In the gallery, the artist built another architectural space with translucent fabric, filling it with some of her earlier works that were separated from their original spatial contexts. Twirling pink lights from inside cast shadows of the works on the translucent fabric. Adding to the uncanny environment, the exhibition title and dates, the name of the artist, and the warning “DO NOT ENTER” were all written on the fabric wall of the temporary structure, but all of the words were flipped, like a mirror reflection. As a result, visitors who bravely or blithely ignored the warning(“DO NOT ENTER”) felt as if they were walking into the back of a mirror. They then found themselves in a strange realm inhabited by the parasitic sculptures by Kim Minae, which had become brazenly self-reliant after shedding their original spatial context. In other words, Kim’s imaginary mirror, which people can enter at their own risk, projects the shadows from the other side, rather than the images of the external object.

A similar mirror effect is achieved in 1. 안녕하세요 2. Hello. First, another diagonal box of light resembling an elongated window appears on a wall of the space, acting as a reversal diagonal of its counterpart above the stairs. Anyone sitting in between these reversed windows has no way of knowing which side is the front or back of the mirror. In addition, black contact paper that matches the width of the red carpet extends obliquely on the floor, before extending vertically up the side of an exhibited work, as if the shadow of the carpet was reflected by the mirror in the wrong direction. The mirror effect extends to the handles on the sides of the aforementioned cubes, which are symmetrically matched with handles on opposing walls. Inverting the hierarchy of objects and space, Kim’s mirror effect disturbs the presumed coordinate axes of the audience’s perception.

Matching—or mirroring—her emphasis on functional architectural elements such as hallways and stairs, Kim Minae also pays special attention to practical accessories like wheels and handles, which exist purely as a means, not an end. Just as hallways and stairs exist as channels for movement, rather than as independent destinations or points of departure, wheels and handles serve solely to allow other objects to be moved. Again, such objects may be seen as three-dimensional versions of the gridlines on manuscript paper or graph paper. By imagining a displaced environment in which these things do not function merely as tools, Kim Minae pulls them from the realm of invisibility. For example, the wheels and handles on the three cubes, as well as the handles on the walls, serve no ostensible purpose, and thus command visitors’ attention and contemplation. In such ways, Kim simultaneously raises awareness of useless tools and means without an end. Throughout her career, she has continuously presented such functional objects with no function, such as a telescope that does not magnify objects, pillars that do not support the weight of a building, wheels that extend into the air, windows and doors that cannot be opened, and stairs that cannot be climbed.

Such devices can be found throughout this exhibition: useless red wheels, silhouettes of windows and doors shallowly etched into the cubes, handles attached in random places, and a red carpet(and its shadow) leading to nowhere. Such self-replication and self-retrospection show that Kim Minae is greeting not only the exhibition space, but also herself. Even while repeating her methodology, Kim persistently rethinks and reconfirms her identity in visualizing the frames of a given space. Like the skewed reflections in her works, she greets and faces her own image in a narcissistic mirror effect.

Notably, however, these narcissistic devices never devolve into pure self-attachment because the entity that Kim aims to greet is not her isolated psychological self, but her institutional identity as an artist. Kim is particularly interested in examining the conditions of possibility of “artist” and “artwork,” which explains why Ai Weiwei is also summoned for reflection in this exhibition. Prior to 1. 안녕하세요 2. Hello, this exhibition space housed Ai Weiwei’s work Bombs, as part of the exhibition Unflattening. Interestingly, the space still bears traces of Ai’s work, including torn images of bombs near the top of an interior wall. Compelling Ai Weiwei to join her mirror play, Kim rejuvenated a two-dimensional image from his work, dislocated from its context of an exhibition about war, by turning it into a three- dimensional sculpture in the center of the space. By appropriating the work of the Chinese artist as her own, Kim reflects on her methodology of parasitic sculpture from a fundamental point of view. Must an artist’s creativity depend on an institutional frame? Can any work be independent from its spatial context? Can a totally autonomous work exist?

4. Greeting of Mourning

At first glance, 1. 안녕하세요 2. Hello resembles a retrospective of Kim Minae organized by the artist herself. Her representative methodology of infesting the space with parasitic sculptures is on full display, and many familiar motifs from her past works can be identified, including useless wheels and handles, carpets and mirrors that invade and disturb the space, and the incorporation of elements from the previous exhibition in a given space. But this self- repetition and self-retrospection should be understood not only as revealing the artist’s narcissism, but more importantly, as attempting to escape from it. Rather than affirming her previous methodology, the current works provoke rumination by instigating doubt. Her paradoxical retrospective is not intended as a reunion, but as a farewell.

Although “hello” is a greeting, it also implies an eventual goodbye, which exists like the shadow of every encounter. If you do not have a farewell with someone, you cannot meet someone else. When a greeting occurs on this side of the mirror, the farewell is simultaneously exchanged on the other side of the mirror. In this exhibition, one of the three cubes slightly differs from the other two, having one side that is shaped like the front of an altar. Atop this cube are figures of three geese concealed beneath a waterproof tarp. The presence of an altar with living organisms covered by a sheet clearly signifies death. Moreover, the size and outline of the cube seem to refer to Rodin’s La Porte de l’Enfer (The Gates of Hell). Similarly, the vertical figure of the bomb based on the image from Ai Weiwei’s work also looks like a monument to death. Perhaps acknowledging the award system of the Korea Artist Prize, Kim also added a vain trophy made of crystal, commemorating nothing, which stands on a vertical pedestal. Embodying the inherent vacuousness of art awards, this trophy also acts as the period on a sentence after a passion has been exhausted or a time period ends.

Tracing the origin of the death and farewell themes brings us to a “funeral” associated with Kim’s aforementioned solo exhibition Black, Pink Balls. Describing this exhibition, Kim said, “The idea was to hold a funeral of sorts for my ‘site-specific’ works in the past, giving them a space of their own. So I created a pseudo white cube, an inverted gallery space where the viewers could not enter straight away.”¹ In other words, she wished to bury her parasitic sculptures, which lose their meaning outside of their original space, on the other side of the mirror. Why did the artist decide to say goodbye to her previous works? Perhaps her desire was related to the inevitable nihilism of works that cannot exist outside of their spatial context. The eulogy at this funeral might consist of nihilistic readings from postmodernism, with its reactive and negative attitude against modernism’s primary thesis, i.e., the autonomy of art. If a sculptor’s fundamental impulse is to create something that stands upright on its own, then Kim Minae can pronounce her will to realize free-standing sculptures without going back to modernism.

But a funeral is only the beginning of a goodbye, rather than the end. In the psychoanaly- tic sense, a funeral is just the start of the work of mourning, which does not end until the self is completely separated from the lost object of attachment. Thus, only when you break up with goodbye is the goodbye complete. As such, this exhibition is also a greeting of mourning, marking the beginning of a long, laborious farewell for Kim Minae. This retrospective is paradoxical in the sense that it seeks to prospect, and the vertical objects here are contradictory monuments commemorating in order to forget.

5. Balls

Oscillating between retrospective and prospective, oblivion and memory, Kim Minae’s work of mourning is carried out in a dualistic manner, maintaining her site-specific methodology while indulging her impulse to build something autonomous. The sculptural desire of the latter resonates through several vertical objects in this exhibition. Next to the bombs borrowed from Ai Weiwei, Kim Minae erected a pen of about the same size. By juxtaposing the distinctive shapes of a pen and bombs, highlighting their similar forms, she seems to be gauging the gap between a work that depends on its spatial context and a work that is independent from it. Nearby is another sculptural object with jagged edges. Containing sand, this object might be taken for a large flowerpot, but its relationship with the space is ambiguous. At present, it is unclear whether these objects will be able to maintain their vitality outside the exhibition space.

All of this mourning began with black, pink balls. The black and pink balls, which inspired the title of Kim’s 2014 exhibition, were actually balloons that she spontaneously brought to her solo exhibition in London in 2013. These enigmatic balls, which are neither self-reliant nor dependent on the surrounding space, triggered Kim Minae’s work of mourning. They unfold the spectrum between the nihilism of site-specific works and the idealism of autonomous works. Scattered around the space of this exhibition are several chairs that look like black balls, with round seats and no backs or armrests. From a certain perspective, these black dots resemble oversized periods. The work of mourning is the process of putting a period after goodbye, and Kim Minae has added several periods to complete her goodbye to her parasitic sculptures. Significantly, however, a group of periods instantly becomes an ellipsis, signaling that Kim’s mourning remains in process. She will continue to act as a parasite of architectural structures, individual habits, social conventions, and art institutions, while at the same time probing the possibilities of building something original and autonomous,constantly questioning the conditions of possibility of the artist and artwork after both modernism and postmodernism.

1 Point Counter Point, exh. cat. (Seoul: Art Sonje Center, 2018), 60.