(Sung woo Kim / Independent Curator, Director of Primary Practice)
KIM Inbai’s work has aspired to meaning that is not subordinated to the realm of solid formal exteriors, despite the robustness of its aesthetic form. As individual objects inside of forms that occupied space, these creations have elicited different relationships as physical environments within space. Through a process of extending the viewer’s perspective beyond the surface-level image or shifting it above the subtly designed logic within the shape, his sculptures become form itself—dynamic and constantly shifting with the observer’s point-of-view—rather than fixed visual phenomena. Within this, the artwork attempts to broaden its scope of meaning by incorporating the environmental conditions that surround it. The result that is observed by others at the end of this process is ironically akin to a state of not yet being anything. In other words, it appears situated in a relationship with the gaze as a thing-in-progress that could become anything, rather than as a sculpture that has been defined as something specific. Within the dynamics of movement possessed by the static image of the sculpture and the ideas that are aspired to beyond it, the artist poses questions about the conventional forms and limits of established cognitive systems. In KIM Inbai’s work, there are no fixed moments—only chains of moments that we perceive, a repeated formation and destruction in continuous form.
The exhibition Seeing What Is Not There focuses on the forms of practice made possible when what is “not seen” is treated as a sculptural object. This act of trying to see what is absent resembles a precondition of art that is now regarded as obvious—namely, the imagining of what exists beyond representation. If we look back at art history, we find that attempts to see the invisible have sometimes consisted of using surrealistic imagery to explore unconscious aspects, or of expressing the individual’s internal experiences, emotions, and energy by way of colors, textures, and lines instead of shapes or images. This has led to experiments that minimize physical embodiment and center on concepts or ideas, as well as attempts to reach the essence of things by restricting artistic expression to minimal elements and eschewing the needlessly ornamental. While the eras and currents may differ, such attempts have consistently redefined the possibilities of art as a tool for philosophical, psychological, or social exploration, proving that it represents a powerful means of investigating what exists beyond reality. In this sense, the examination of realms existing beyond representations of reality may be described as a form of practice that makes use of material representation as an avenue to approach reality. “Invisibility” denotes a world of possibility, while the sequence of interpretations and re-interpretations goes beyond merely imitating the real world to posit a dimension that is alive with imagination, abstraction, fiction, and concepts.
In this exhibition, KIM Inbai hypothesizes a certain dimension by using the concepts of “place” and “space”[1]as a backdrop for playing with conventional understanding and encouraging new cognitive perceptions. To this end, he begins by replicating the space right in front of the gallery entrance. When perceiving space, we almost inevitably come to rely on the physical environment: the open air is divided by physical structures into spatial units, while functions create the physical conditions of reality. Through a process of visually containing the empty space in front of the entrance, KIM focuses the gaze on the characteristics of the ceiling and floor. These two vertically facing surfaces are then imitated on horizontally facing walls. On one of the walls, a portion of the electrical equipment on the actual ceiling is faithfully reproduced (Replicating Empty Space_from a distance, 2024); on the opposite one, the cracks and marks of the floor are transplanted in graphite as if in a rubbing (Replicating Empty Space_See and Touch, 2024). One of the works reproducing the floor adopts a format in which rubbing with pencil on thin paper is used to record marks on the surface. The other is created by using oilpaper to record along cracks in the floor, with the pattern then inscribed on the wall with carbon paper. These two representational approaches exist in counterpoint, like a positive/negative or replicating/casting pairing. As the vertical dimensions are inverted into horizontal ones, what happens to the space in between? Through shifting in the units used to systematically define the space (from “height” to “area”) and through variations in the recording and translation of the physical structures dividing it, the viewer’s perceptions now three-dimensionalize the environment in more singular ways.
At the end of the gallery are two spaces that seem almost intangible (Drawing Made from Too Far A Distance 1 & 2, 2024). As the viewer approaches them, the pencil lines over the surface seem to design the small space into patterns of a sort. To make these, the artist attached a pencil to a long rod and sketched simple forms, yet the results are drawings for which the limits of vision are such that even he could not judge the forms’ success or failure. Form was no longer important. What mattered instead was controlling the gesture that divided the void, in between an extension of the body and interruption of the gaze, and the trembling created there as the small, restrained movements broke away from the gaze and disappeared. It may be that visuality is something with clear inherent limits. In that context, KIM’s Mold of Absence series (2024) applies a somewhat different hypothesis to time and space. Produced by adhering a rubber interior to an exterior that firmly sustains it, the culture was based on a method that involved creating two layers of molds. Faced with a work where the inner original form is absent, structured solely through the affixing of mold surfaces, the viewer finds their gaze traveling to the shape—or to the traces of the surface—rather than to the inner space. The sculptures stretch out as though bisecting the space, forming an interrelationship through their varying heights. Because of the more dynamic traces left on the copper plates (representing the artist’s actions), the gaze is sometimes fixed on the surface (close-range view) rather than the volume. As this connects into three surfaces (middle-range view) and four surfaces (distant view), the scope of the gaze is expanded to volume rather than surface and three dimensions rather than two.
As we follow the sounds in the setting, we reach Replicating Empty Space (2024). In the corresponding video, two figures in an empty, lit theater present a Zen riddle exchange. Yet the conversation and perspectives between the sculptor—who is attempting to imitate the screen space—and the director, who is moving a camera to record that process, keep sliding out of alignment. It may be that the director (who attempts to establish an observer’s perspective clearly capturing the subject) and the sculptor (who, when asked if the shapes he creates are fixed, responds that they “are fixed but may appear to change”) were always subjects whose gazes would never align. In the image shown by the camera, we may imagine the perspectives of various other subjects occupying the space beyond those of the two speakers. Everything from the positions of the various elements defining the theater space to the light, darkness, and time exists as a subject creating the event. Just as the represented forms explore further possibilities beyond as the conversation in the video goes on, just as the narrative of the figures on camera is driven by the environment and conditions outside the screen, these moments of aspiring to contemplation and perception beyond seeing cause belief to crumble, while the questions shift merely toward confirming the next belief. It is like the words of the sculptor in the video, who describes it as a moment and event that arises somewhere between prophecy and planning.
In this exhibition, KIM Inbai models and casts “absence” and insistently gazes upon that which “disappears or does not exist visually.” Taking invisible states and situations as catalysts for expanding the scope of thought, he engages in a sculptural experiment with vicariously performing/mediating the “act of seeing.” The resulting exhibition alternates between logic and sense, actuality and imagination, reality and symbols, yet it also demands that we perceive previously unsensed times and spaces. To see what is not there is to fathom conditions existing beyond visual systems. Rather than actual non-existence, it anticipates a moment when we are able to focus on what lies outside the lists of visually constructed systems. What is posited here is a time and space where everyday conditions are distorted outside the visual, and unexpected affective perceptions arise and clash from within those misalignments.
[1] “Space” is more conceptually abstract and fluid than “place.” Space does not have a single identity attached to it, and so it can be reconstructed over and over with new meanings. Space becomes fixed as place when it acquires meaning within concrete reality.