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| January 11 - February 08, 2003 |
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In-Sun Kim | encased
Encased presents a new body of installation work by In-Sun Kim Ð a series of
furniture pieces assembled from blocks of collated newsprint. The methodical and time-consuming labour
involved in the production of each work is the foundation of Kim's creativity and artistic practice,
which grows out of childhood experiences on her parents' farm in Korea. Kim infuses the repetitive
process of gluing together sheets of newspaper with the same tireless resolve required for tasks
such as pulling stems from thousands of dried red hot peppers. Once the newspaper blocks have solidified,
Kim cuts them with a saw, sands them, and uses them as building materials for furniture and accessories. The relentless layering of the glue / graphite mixture with newsprint is both a struggle and a meditation;
it is a process that traps the thoughts and emotions unleashed by the creative effort between each successive
layer of newspaper sheet. The result is a combination of the predetermined and of the accidental. The surface
of the neat blocks of pressed newspaper settles into random patterns resembling the grain of actual wood. The
isolated word clusters that emerge after sanding act as mnemonic devices, activating collective memories or
imaginative speculations on the events described on the newsprint pages; moments isolated from the historical
flow and now permanently encased within blocks of furniture. As Kim's material is transformed from recycled paper
to "newsprint block" and finally to functional living room armchair, the fragility of the paper metamorphoses into
a new substance that is nevertheless a version of its original form. Encased is a commentary on the cyclical nature of existence, continually disrupted by moments when
time is arrested or locked into perpetual repetition. Kim's objects of furniture trap memory and history; they
function in that precarious space between fragility and permanence. Veronika Klaptocz |
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