Installation view of 《Two Be One》 ⓒ Hoam Museum of Art
The Hoam Museum of Art presents a major retrospective, 《Two Be One》, of Kim Yun Shin—a
first-generation female sculptor who played a pivotal role in the development
of modern Korean sculpture—on view through June 28.
Kim Yun Shin (b. 1935, Wonsan) has persistently explored the
beauty of nature and the essence of life through wood as her primary material
since the late 1970s. Having grown up during a turbulent era marked by
liberation and war, and having established herself as an artist within the
harsh postwar art environment, she stands as a living witness to Korea’s modern
and contemporary history and art.
Since entering the Department of Sculpture at Hongik University
in 1955, she has devoted more than seventy years to her artistic practice,
producing approximately 1,500 works across both two-dimensional and
three-dimensional forms.
This retrospective brings together around 170 works, spanning
from her earliest surviving pieces—prints from her time studying in Paris in
the 1960s—along with subsequent experimental works on paper, to the diverse
paintings she began to pursue in depth in her sixties, excluding works from
before the 1960s that are no longer extant.
Installation view of 《Two Be One》 ⓒ Hoam Museum of Art
This exhibition marks the artist’s first large-scale
retrospective, bringing together Kim Yun Shin’s paintings and sculptures to
present her practice as a unified sculptural world.
The first-floor galleries begin with the ‘Stacking Wishes’
series from the mid-to-late 1970s, along with ‘Add Two Add One, Divide Two
Divide One’—works from the period in which her core philosophy took shape. Also
on view are lithographs and drawings that reveal the artist’s wide-ranging
experiments with abstract forms.
On the second floor, visitors encounter another major axis of
Kim’s practice: her stone sculptures, alongside the diverse developments of her
wood sculptures since the 2000s. In addition, key paintings to which she has
devoted herself passionately since the 2000s are presented, offering a
different formal language through which one can sense an intense vitality and a
profound joy of life.
Kim Yun Shin, Tree Full of Songs 2013-16V1, 2025, Acrylic paint on aluminum, 135x202x56cm. Photo: Eun Chun. Image provided by Hoam Museum of Art. ⓒ Kim Yun Shin
Installed outside the second-floor gallery, the recent work Tree
Full of Songs 2013–16V1 (2025) brings the exhibition to a close. This
piece, created by casting a 2013 wooden sculpture in aluminum and adding
acrylic paint, is part of the artist’s ongoing body of work she describes as
“painting-sculpture,” in which she actively expands the boundaries between
painting and sculpture.
The Hoam Museum of Art auditorium will host a range of programs
in conjunction with the exhibition. On March 27, an artist talk will feature
Kim Yun Shin reflecting on her life and practice. Public lectures offering
diverse perspectives on her artistic world will be held on April 24 and May 15.
On June 13, an international symposium will explore the
significance of her work within the history of Korean sculpture and within
modernism across Asia and South America. All programs are available by advance
reservation via the Leeum Museum of Art website.
