Soft Focus presents an interview of Eunji Kim, a Busan-based artist who works across sound, video and painting installation alongside with her solo exhibition at Space Ubermensch.
Kim Eun-ji, who works across the installation of videos, sounds, and paintings, is working with doubts about art which uses visual perspective as the fundamental sense. She asks this an essential question of ‘seeing’ through experimenting with creating a painting without the act of painting or the possibility of a painting without an image.
S/F: When I look at your work, I sense that you used to be a painter but gradually have turned the painting into the subject of questions in your work. Furthermore, you seem to be interested in contradictions of art itself, so what is the contradiction that you encounter while working?
EJ: The contradiction that I face constantly is ‘I’. The attitude I have as a human being to the world, a timid rebellious spirit, a contradictory tendency, and a reflection or defense mechanism are naturally reflected in the work. The beginning and contradiction of my work is to show rebellion in my own way to the clichés. I have been educated in the sheltered existing art education system since I was young (although I am still working in the art education system), and the dual attitude of my desire to express my problem and complacency to safely align within that framework has led to doubts and reflection on the system or art itself. I'm facing myself and recognising my work as something of a contradictory and incomplete state.
S/F: Among your works, "In the Studio" interested me. The thoughts that a painter have while painting are projected on to the canvases in text and I found it interesting that the act of drawing does not become a painting, but the inner thoughts and the sound that the artist makes itself becomes a painting. In the text, "Ah, just do it, I'll only fail" honestly revealed the artist's inner conflict, but is the attitude or spirit of "I'll only fail" expressed in the current work based on installation? As an artist, I wonder how you look at art.
EJ: I wanted to ask a question about how the creative process itself is connected to the meaning as a work of art. Recently reading the book 'Unproductive Time of Production', I sympathized a lot as a creator. Even if I spend all day in the studio, most time is spent without any productive results (from the artist's own standards), so I would get nervous of the lethargic time where I said, "Oh, I didn't do anything today, I didn't do anything." But visitors of an exhibition would not even imagine those times when they see only the exhibited final outcome. Perhaps one should be prudent to reveal the artist's personal internal conflicts or weaknesses, but I think the time, thoughts, and attitude spent working are in fact the work themselves. Just as it is the artist's authority to decide when to put down the brush while painting, I try to break away from the framework of perfection and unfold imperfections or failures themselves. And my questions aroused from these processes lead my next step.
S/F: This exhibition "A Kind Silence" seems to be an extension of the recent "Timeline_Water Flow." Silence means no talking, but to connect this state with painting, I think painting is also silent. Or you might think that the way of speaking has a form other than 'speaking' that is uttered by sound.
EJ: The title of this exhibition "A Kind Silence" came to mind after reading Octavio Paz’s "Poetry." Octavio Paz wrote that the place where the poem stays is "between," and I thought the emotional and spatial layer of "between" resembled that of silence. I understand that there are many layers of hearts between words and silence, as there is silence in words, and that words can be read from silence. In that respect, there is an expectation that the state of the conversation and video wandering in between will lead to silence.
S/F: ‘A Kind Silence’ consists of paintings, videos, and installations, and all of those elements are affecting each other, but I also felt like they were offsetting each other. The video resembles a painting, and the painting is installed next to the video, and it seems to be refusing to be accepted as a painting. Mirrors also have no choice but to reflect images other than their own. What do you think about the relationship between images and paintings and mirrors in this exhibition?
EJ: I wanted to make medium with different viewpoints to share a mutual ground having the images and paintings in the centre. Personally, I see this exhibition as a big flow, a flowing image. In particular, mirrors and everyday objects that I used for the first time in my work already have their own functions and contexts, so I have no choice but to bring them naturally to the work by changing and transforming within its context. I framed a double-sided canvas and painted it and they are installed on top of the monitor. While walking through the exhibition, you encounter another painting, where both sides of the canvas are reflected by using the reflective nature of mirrors. On the other hand, the images and video are suggesting a different approach. Even though it is placed in a complete state, ambiguous forms, brush strokes, and focus-out images interfere the visual immersion. The mirror contains contradictory things simultaneously, which is opposed to the existing context of the mirror.
S/F: It seems that the installed video aims to show multiple layers of a world that we don't usually see or exists only in pixelated images. How do you select the images appearing in the video?
EJ: Actually, I sometimes think that I should do something when I hold the camera, but I think the moments when I meet the images are different for each work. It can be said that the first step of the choice is to separate what I am currently seeing, but what I cannot see at once, and by recognising this separation that usually not visible is the first step of constructing what I am going to see next. There's a shape, color, movement, and function of what I am seeing. I think those are the things that are chosen when they align with my thoughts.
SS/F: Lastly, please tell me what you want to share about this exhibition and future work plans.
EJ: Rather than appreciating my exhibition with the expectation of understanding or receiving something through art, I hope you can engage with the point where thoughts arise while looking at the work. In that respect, I think it would be nice if we could ask the questions together that I asked while working for this show.
Many questions arise in the process of working, preparing, and finishing the exhibition. I think this process itself is actually more meaningful, and I'm going to continue to follow the emerging questions. Recently, as I started painting again and prepared for this exhibition, there was a question about the possibility a painting that could exist without an intention to exist as a painting, even if there are traces of painting, but the traces existed in a different sense. I'm going to take some time to think about it.