This marks Kimsooja’s first solo exhibition in New York in virtually 20 years.

Because the early Nineteen Eighties, Korean conceptual artist Kimsooja has used efficiency, movie, images, sculpture and site-specific installations to poetically meditate on the notion of portray by way of the language of cultural traditions in her homeland, in addition to the human situation by way of rules of “non-doing” and “non-making.” This exhibition options examples from a number of main our bodies of labor together with To Breathe (2023–24); Bottari (1992–2024); Deductive Object (1990–2024); and Meta-Portray (2019–2024).

The bottari—a conventional Korean bundle used to wrap and shield private belongings—has change into a central type, each bodily and conceptually, in Kimsooja’s follow. Consultant of important belongings and a nomadic way of life, the bottari can also be a metaphor to check with the common idea of house and migration, but in addition to a transitory state.

Extending the bottari idea to the outside and inside of the gallery, a two half iteration of To Breathe wraps the gallery area in numerous types of mild, providing a transformative expertise and a meditation on portray that embodies the artist’s enduring curiosity within the dualism of life and artwork. As mild enters by way of the gallery’s home windows, it turns into refracted by a particular movie that transforms the pure mild into iridescent landscapes that change all through the day. In the primary exhibition area, a mirrored platform folds the structure of the gallery and affords the viewer an opportunity to interact extra deeply with the environment, giving them area for reflection and contemplation. Within the heart of the platform, mild is projected from above, making a floating tableau of shade which slowly progresses by way of the seen spectrum. By portray with mild, Kimsooja expands the standard notion of portray, reworking the floor into an ever-changing shade discipline.

Within the upstairs gallery, a sequence of recent Meta-Work are suspended from the ceiling and accompanied by wrapped bundles of the identical materials, echoing the bottari type. With the Meta-Work Kimsooja continues to discover the basic rules of portray and its origins. In 2020 on the Wanås Konst Sculpture Park in Sweden, Kimsooja created linen spun from flax that she had planted, cultivated, and harvested. Created along side this challenge, these works reconstruct portray as a life-generating cycle, the unpainted canvas investigates the conceptual relationship between portray, agriculture, and textile.

Kimsooja’s sculptural wrapped portray Deductive Object suggests a totality that alludes to beginning and demise. The ovoid form was impressed by the Brahmanda stone (“cosmic egg”) which in Indian mythology is believed to face on the origin of creation. Conceptualized as a portray that doesn’t reveal its floor, the deep black absorbs ambient mild so the mirrored floor under enfolds the bodily area round it.

Deductive Object: (Un)fold comes within the type of handmade hanji (Korean rice paper). The crumbled rice paper has absorbed the form of the artist’s hand because it shaped the paper right into a sphere and subsequently unfolded it. These works are on view alongside Meta-Portray, a sculptural stack of 500 sheets of handmade hanji, which takes virtually a 12 months to dry into the textural slab.

Throughout all mediums and with materials acuity, Kimsooja ponders what’s human—life, demise, loss, craving, magnificence, routine, progress—connecting the person expertise and international ideas with a discernible notion of the on a regular basis, gaining perception into our existence and the world through which we dwell.

at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York
till June 14, 2024