Kim Kulim during the performance 《From Extinction to Creation》, held in the demolished PlaceMAK 2 building. © PlaceMAK
On June
24, pioneering Korean experimental artist Kim Kulim staged a radical
performance by demolishing the PlaceMAK 2 building in Seoul's Yeonhui-dong and
installing a monumental spherical inflatable sculpture atop its ruins.
The
90-year-old artist arrived at PlaceMAK 2—the venue of his latest solo
exhibition—accompanied by an excavator and a team of demolition workers. Despite
his limited mobility, the artist directed the demolition performance with hand
gestures, signaling the workers to tear down the building's roof and walls and
clear away the rubble..
As the
outline of the exhibition space disappeared, a five-meter-diameter spherical
form emerged from the pile of rubble. Inflated with air beneath a fabric
membrane, the sculpture symbolically evokes new stories and possibilities
arising from a site of demolition, fading memories, and the passage of time.
Kim's
provocative performance, 《From Extinction to Creation》, coincided with the rebuilding of PlaceMAK 2. Through the project,
PlaceMAK said it sought to pose a fundamental question: what new forms of
creation can emerge after something disappears?
The Performance 《From Extinction to Creation》, held in the demolished PlaceMAK 2 building. © PlaceMAK
Reflecting
on the project, Kim Kulim shared the following thoughts:
"Contemporary
artists spend their entire lives exhibiting works confined within the white
cubes of commercial galleries and museums, gradually exhausting themselves in
the process. As I approach the end of my life, I have grown weary of those
restrictive conventions, and at the age of ninety I wanted to try something
different.
On a
personal level, this project also carries another meaning. In 1968, I staged a
performance wrapping the former building of the National Museum of Modern and
Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA)—then located inside Gyeongbokgung Palace and
originally built as the Japanese Government-General Museum—with unbleached
cotton fabric. It was dismantled in less than two days, and I had always felt a
lingering sense of regret over that work.
During
my exhibition at the MMCA Seoul, in 2023, I hoped to revisit that unrealized
idea by wrapping the museum's current Seoul building in the same fabric.
However, the proposal was not approved. In a way, this demolition performance
at PlaceMAK finally allowed me to resolve that long-held regret, which makes
the experience deeply moving."
The
remnants of the blue-, yellow-, and red-hued spherical sculpture, together with
fragments of the demolished roof, will not be discarded.
Instead,
the gallery plans to reinstall these materials at the construction site in one
to two months, when the structural frame of the rebuilt PlaceMAK building
begins to take shape, transforming them into another spontaneous site-specific
exhibition.
