Installation view of 《Beyond》© ARARIO MUSEUM
ARARIO MUSEUM in SPACE presents a solo exhibition 《Beyond》, by artist Kim Ji Hyun, on view
through July 19.
Since around 2019, Kim has been deeply engaged with his ‘Untitled’
series, in which planes of color and linear elements occupy the entirety of the
canvas. Across expanses of color that fill the surface, traces of dots and
planes accumulate to the point of appearing almost performative.
Over these, bold, sweeping lines traverse the canvas. Near these
black strokes, a red circle may occasionally appear; elsewhere, bundles of
white lines or gently undulating jade-colored lines emerge. With a limited set
of recurring elements, Kim establishes his own visual language, arranging and
varying them across different compositions.
Works that seem formally similar differ in color, while those
that appear chromatically alike diverge in structure. Against this shifting
backdrop, thick black strokes cut across the surface in all directions.
Installation view of 《Beyond》© ARARIO MUSEUM
Yet, these
works resist simple recognition. At first glance, the patterned signifiers
scattered across the pictorial plane appear to gesture toward slightly
different meanings; but in the absence of corresponding signifieds, any
iconographic interpretation quickly leads astray.
The forms and
colors that recur through variation escape the network of meaning typically
structured by signification, instead attempting to exist as signifiers in and
of themselves. This recalls certain trajectories in the history of abstract
painting, as well as late-modernist practices that sought to foreground art as
material both within and “Beyond” the canvas.
While Kim
compresses, within his own artistic trajectory, a century of avant-garde
experimentation, he does not remain there. By redirecting attention to the
physical conditions of his practice, he strives to endow these free-floating
signifiers—detached from signified meaning—with a sense of objecthood.
