A Conversation with the world:
Introspections in Raptures through a Dialogue
Jang, Minhan ( Seoul Museum of Art, Senior Curator)

At the moment we feel beauty, we are happy. Happiness makes us think over moments and eternity, and simultaneously reflects the world that gives us beauty. Kim, Myeongbeom’s work, composed of objects easily found in our surroundings, is delicately arranged and so captures our attention. A tree floating in the air held by countless red balloons; a stuffed deer with wide spreading antlers; the huge bough of a tree, with acupuncture needles; a crutch linked to a deer leg – all these make us feel a sense of life. Each is within the combination of many objects from our everyday surroundings, conveying metaphorical assertions. The combination of two objects brings about a poetic structure, allowing viewers to discover new meaning. Kim forms an abstruse relation with the world, approaching it in his own way. We can understand his aesthetic and ways of reading the world by noting this relation.

Dialogue with the World – Marriage of Objects

Kim’s work appears contemplative and composed. Through his work, Kim intends to describe his own experience in a placid manner, through private conversations with his surrounding environment, rather than presenting any enormous social assertion. We tend to remember innumerable objects and incidents as our lives demand them. As our way of living changes, we react to the world in different manners. The artist tries to examine how his surrounding is perceived and remembered. To do this he listens to a whisper from objects within his surroundings. The artist attempts an intimate, private dialogue with the world, trying to concretely present to way other things approach him, by using other mediums. He mainly uses heterogeneous objects. For instance, Kim shows the reflection of deer antlers by connecting a stuffed deer antler with spreading stems. This is a reflection on deer antlers, not a simple presentation of associated antler imagery. He metaphorically presents the image of deer antlers he has seen so far.

A deer antler is similar to a tree’s bough in form. As a bough is cut at the moment when a tree is fully grown, the artist notes the fact that an antler is removed at a similar moment. In this sense, an antler can be replaced with a bough. The frailty of crutches can also be replaced with the leg of a feeble animal like a deer. Kim talks with his surrounding objects in his own way. In this respect, Kim’s work conveys trivial day-to-day narratives. The artist presents a forum where he converses with objects in attractive compositions. We may secure a fresh gaze toward the world through our participation in his secret conversations.

We can share his work’s life force through this participation. This dialogue derives from our constant concern for objects. This concern is a response to beings we desire; not a reaction to our desire. To ask what an object means to us is like asking what beings we are. If we feel freshness in a certain work, it comes from the way an artist experiences his surrounding things, not from an object itself. In other words, the freshness of his work is identical with vitality. We feel a sense of life in the constant gaze toward such objects, not in the objects themselves. The artist has consistently experienced his surrounding objects from the perspective of live, growth, and decline, which lends vitality to his work. He sees his environment from the viewpoint of life. Inspections of Growth and Decline Kim’s work involves a temporal element. We feel infinite freedom and completeness in his tree suspended from dozens of balloons. This tree, suspended at a certain height in the air, and maintaining a proper balance, is likely to fly trough the sky, quite freely. The tree appears stable, and its roots floating through the air make us feel infinite freedom. The fact that the tree is suspended from the balloons implies the tree will be hurled down to the ground when the balloons are deflated with time. It offers us an instantly brilliant moment. The reality the balloons are deflated and hurled down as a thin branch with time is strongly inspiring to us.

A male deer’s antler, like a flamboyant and enormous bough, completely reflects the character of an imposing male deer. But the artist visually indicates it is inexistent in reality. This magnificent antler is artificially made by using countless strands of thread. As the tree hung from balloons does, so too the deer appears as an unrealistic objects. This unrealistic object provokes heartrending nostalgia, through which we undergo a natural cycle of growth and decline. We also experience the truth that perfection does not go with eternity.

Metaphor for Life, and Magnetism of the Finite

In other pieces, Kim takes a metaphorical approach to trivial everyday issues. He draws out innumerable conceptions through metaphorical juxtaposition of two everyday objects. Many of his pieces are untitled, as the artist wanted to free the unfolding of our imagination. The artist expects us to engage in talks with objects liberally. Exploiting different subject matter his raises issues of life and its finiteness, by maintaining a constant attitude. He demonstrates the feebleness of life through the combination of a crutch, and a deer’ leg; the finiteness of dreams and life, through the marriage of balloons and a tree; and he addresses the mater of life and healing through a connection of a tree’s bough and a bird spike. Kim shows the magnetism of the finite alongside his concerns with life. He also metaphorically shows the attraction of life and its limit through a minute video- work featuring melting ice.

A traditional objective of art is to discover an artist’s own way through which he experiences the world. Kim takes the same path of his seniors, in that he intends to discover his own way to respond to the world, through a wide variety of objects. To do this, he carefully arranges objects to draw viewers to the way that he wants. The symmetrical structure and equilibrium of his work we immediately feel as the basis of an attractive stability and finiteness. He invites us to his conversation with objects through a delicate composition. In a word, his work is poetry, whose meaning is exquisitely weaved, and in which viewers can find their own meaning freely. His work offers us an experience to read the world in a fresh manner. This freshness and vitality we feel in his work provides us an opportunity to look back on out lives as if it were a poem.