Kim Minae (b. 1981) has continued to explore and indirectly reveal the multilayered frameworks or systems that individuals experience and perceive within society. Focusing on the invisible boundaries between herself and her surroundings, as well as the self-contradictory aspects inherent in commonly accepted social agreements, she translates these situations into three-dimensional forms within given spaces.

Kim Minae's work begins with questions about her relationship with her surroundings. Her early works stem from self-reflection on how she, as an individual, approaches the world. For instance, in her first solo exhibition, 《Anonymous Scenes》 (2008), she expressed her conflicting attitude—a desire to move forward while maintaining a distance from the world—through sculptures created with everyday objects.

One of her works from her time studying in the UK, Conundrum (2010), reconstructs the paradoxical situations one faces when yearning for something. Kim created a massive telescope-like structure fitted with a double-sided mirror at the lens. This configuration prevents viewers from seeing external landscapes, instead reflecting only chaotic, distorted images of their surroundings.

At the front of the telescope, a small platform is installed. When stepping onto it, the viewer is abruptly confronted with their own reflection. This series of unexpected scenarios highlights the experience of striving for a goal, only to find oneself drifting further away from it—until eventually being forced to face oneself.

Kim Minae has also focused on architectural structures she discovers in her surroundings, alongside her works that incorporate her circumstances into everyday objects or their configurations. For example, her 2010 work A Structure to Make the Corner Right begins with the idea of the corner—a space found in every building. 

The artist began to view the corner as a metaphor for situations where one must conform to societal norms and frameworks. Reflecting this perspective, she decided to install an unusual structure in a corner, one that serves no functional purpose and could be removed without affecting the building—akin to her own presence in society. 

The structure, imbued with this existential symbolism, was equipped with a handle, allowing it to be repeatedly inserted and removed. Kim incorporated a performance element into the work, demonstrating this repetitive action as part of the piece.

The artist's interest in architectural structures became more pronounced during the 《Young Korean Artists 2013》 exhibition held at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Gwacheon. For this exhibition, Kim presented an installation, Relatively Related Relationship, inspired by the rough handrails located on the museum’s staircase, bringing their form into the gallery space. 

The handrail-like structures, now placed within the exhibition hall, existed in an intermediate state—neither fulfilling their original functional purpose nor entirely assuming the role of an artwork. For instance, these structures were scattered throughout the gallery, ambiguously positioned to either guide or obstruct the movement of viewers. 

Despite their lack of inherent authority or value, the seven handrails engaged with the viewer by subtly influencing their movements, blurring the line between functional objects and art.

Kim Minae has continued to develop works that engage with space, exposing the systems and conventions we take for granted or representing individuals within these frameworks through sculptural forms. In her 2014 installation Black, Pink Balls at DOOSAN Gallery, Kim reintroduced works that had temporarily intervened in specific locations but lost their context over time, reflecting on the rigidity and contradictions of institutional systems. 

For this project, Kim constructed an additional white cube within the gallery space. Inside this enclosed structure, she irregularly arranged fragmented pieces from her previous exhibitions alongside two moving pink lights. The opaque walls of the cube limited the viewer’s access, allowing them to perceive only the shadows and silhouettes of the artworks illuminated by the erratic movement of the lights. 

The moving pink lights in this work embody the “pink balls,” serving to make the artworks visible. However, they too exist only temporarily within the space, without a definitive physical form. The pink balls, simultaneously present yet absent, reflect a paradoxical existence. Similarly, the viewer, invited to the exhibition but unable to directly engage with its interior, and the site-specific works that have lost their original context, all find themselves in contradictory situations within the gallery.

In her 2018 solo exhibition 《GIROGI》 at Atelier Hermès, Kim Minae explored the contradictions inherent in the process by which artworks, once placed in an exhibition space, are defined as “art.” She focused on the point where the space intended to house art transforms into a framework that defines it.

To meet the imposed conditions of being recognized as “art,” the work creates an alibi for itself, concealing illogical and absurd aspects in the process. The exhibition sought to reveal these institutional and conventional dynamics and the situations in which art is compelled to validate its own identity.

Kim transformed the exhibition space into a kind of moving image apparatus. In the empty gallery, the sporadic flapping sounds of bird wings echoed intermittently. Following the movement of lights, a giant bird-like figure would appear faintly on the walls, only to vanish again.

The faintly visible figure on the wall—the (false) protagonist—along with the interplay of light and sound that conjures the exhibition’s outcome, serves as a metaphor for exposing the raw mechanisms behind art’s framing and validation. It reflects on the “convincing” façades often ascribed to art both within and outside the institution, seeking to unmask these layers in their unpolished form.

The work 1. 안녕하세요 2. Hello (2020), presented at the Korea Artist Prize exhibition at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Seoul, reflects the culmination of Kim Minae’s artistic practice. The exhibition is composed of three interwoven layers, each organically connected. 

The first layer consists of installations that respond to the unique architectural structure of Gallery 2 in the Seoul venue. These installations bring overlooked spaces—physically present yet often unrecognized as sculptural forms—to the forefront, assigning them the role of artworks. Complementing these “overlooked” spaces, a series of sculptures are formally arranged to react to and engage with these areas, creating a dialogue between the physical structure of the gallery and the introduced elements.

Building upon the primary layer, a second layer unfolds in response. This layer summons elements from the artist’s past exhibitions, functioning as historical references that allow viewers to revisit and reflect on Kim Minae's established methodologies. 

The final layer emerges from the foundation of these two preceding layers, introducing a freestanding sculptural piece. While this sculpture appears to exist independently on its own pedestal, it is, in fact, embedded within the multi-layered contexts and interactions generated by the exhibition’s spatial and conceptual framework. 
The sculptures, whether echoing or counteracting one another, reveal an intentional artificiality, highlighting distortions, coincidences, and errors within the sculptural narrative. This theatrical interplay creates a layered sculptural drama, where boundaries between space, structures, and artworks are blurred. 

This dismantling of distinctions reflects Kim’s enduring inquiry: “Can sculpture exist independently from its environment or context?” Ultimately, the work evolves into a broader meditation on the question: “What is art?”

In her 2023 solo exhibition 《Giant》 at ONE AND J. Gallery, Kim Minae delved into not only her concerns as an artist but also the fundamental struggles of living as an imperfect human being. Treating the given exhibition space as a single frame, she explored themes of the desire to believe in something and questions about sculpture, presenting each floor with different interpretations and creating a cohesive mass reflecting these ideas.

Kim crafted and replicated ambiguous forms that seemed to merge the iconic sculptures of masters like Michelangelo or Rodin with the mass-produced replicas of religious icons from contemporary society. These installations, scattered throughout the exhibition space, suggested that art, much like religion, operates through repeated cycles of belief and faith.

The A Series of Statues / A Series of Pedestals (2023), featured statues adorned with ornate lace decorations, standing atop pedestals as if they were idols. However, despite their grandeur, these figures were incomplete, existing as reproducible forms that could even have their heads severed by the constraints of the space. Through 《Giant》, Kim Minae confessed her own imperfections, acknowledging the human tendency to create entities to lean on, to hope for, and to justify the unseen.

In the 《IMA Picks 2024》 exhibition at Ilmin Museum of Art, Kim Minae engaged with the context of Gwanghwamun, the area surrounding the museum, and brought it into the institutional space of the museum. The exhibition connected the multifaceted meanings of the word "circus" (acrobats, roundness, squares, chaos, performance facilities, etc.) with a view of the museum area that blends modernity and contemporaneity.

Kim invoked the mixed landscape of Gwanghwamun—a view of Gyeongbokgung Palace, colonial architecture, and skyscrapers—by creating incomplete signs that evoked this historic space. Works like sculptures that transformed rooftop objects into temporary abstractions and floor installations reminiscent of waterproof paint finishes common in Korea reflected the urban landscape and impressions of the Gwanghwamun district.

One particular piece, Wait and See (2024), placed in a vantage-point-like position, allowed the viewer to step up and observe from above, enabling them to look down on the reality-markers that unexpectedly intervened within the exhibition space, mimicking a spectator's view of the surrounding environment.

In another space, Kim Minae reinterprets older works that were stored after exhibitions and reconfigures them as interior decorations. For instance, the nine bird bas-reliefs from 《GIROGI》 (Atelier Hermès, 2018) are merged into a single sculpture, and the pedestal from 《Giant》 (ONE AND J. Gallery, 2023) has been reformed into a mirrored table. These objects, now detached from the concepts that sustained past exhibitions, react within a new context.

Through this approach, Kim Minae begins from an internal gaze upon herself and critically examines the social systems and art institutions that are often taken for granted, highlighting the errors and contradictions that emerge within them through sculptural forms. Her works are completed by observing how they create a particular context and interaction via the physical conditions provided and the audience’s engagement with them.

"I want to continue being an artist who never stops questioning what I am familiar with, or what I believe to be true." (Kim Minae, Public Art, 2018)

Kim Minae received her B.F.A. and M.F.A. in Sculpture from Seoul National University in Seoul, Korea and her M.A. in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art in London, UK, DPhil in Fine Art, Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford, UK. She has held solo exhibitions, including 《Giant》 (ONE AND J. Gallery, Seoul, 2023); 《GIROGI》 (Atelier Hermès, Seoul, 2018); 《Conditional Drawings》 (DOOSAN Gallery, New York, 2015); 《Black, Pink Balls》 (DOOSAN Gallery, Seoul, 2014) and many more.

Participated in numerous group exhibitions including those held at the Iimin Museum of Art, Seoul (2024); Kimsechoong Museum, Seoul (2021); National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea (2020, 2017); Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea (2018); ARKO Art Center, Seoul, Korea (2018); Art Sonje Center, Seoul, Korea (2018), National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, Korea (2018, 2017); and others.

She was selected as one of the finalists for the Korea Artist Prize 2020 and her works are in the collection of National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea; Seoul Museum of Art, Korea; MMCA Art Bank, Korea; Doosan Yonkang Foundation, Korea; etc.

References

•  국립현대미술관, MMCA 작가와의 대화 | 김민애 작가 (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA), MMCA Artist Talk | Kim Minae
• 두산아트센터, 검은, 분홍 공 (DOOSAN Art Center, Black, Pink Balls)
• 아뜰리에 에르메스, 기러기 (Atelier Hermès, GIROGI)
• 국립현대미술관, 올해의 작가상 2020 (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA), Korea Artist Prize 2020)
• 일민미술관, IMA Picks 2024 (Ilmin Museum of Art, IMA Picks 2024)
• 원앤제이 갤러리, 거인 (ONE AND J. Gallery, Giant)
• 퍼블릭아트, 김민애 (Public Art, Kim Minae)