Rodriguez- Artist Presentation #2: Kimsooja

                     

Kimsooja

• Born in Taegu, South Korea- 1957
• Earned her BFA and MA from Hong-IK University, Seoul
• She choose the name Kimsooja for herself because it eliminates the gender association- there is no separation of her given name and her family name. 
• lives and works in New York
• She started off using the bottari as an alternative to painting on paper and then began to see the possibilities that can come from simply wrapping the bottari and began to work three-dimensionally

Mind and the World, 1991

Influence/Early Life Here

Kimsoojas contribution to the Art world

- she uses the "bottari"- a traditional bed cover used to wrap personal belongings in her work, which serves as a metaphor for structure and connection

- she relies on the presence of the viewer and emphasizes it in her work, allowing the viewer to take some of the bottaris in some of her exhibition installations

-uses the human body, fabric, air that she considers to be breathing fabric and sewing in her work- predominately.

- she uses her body as a method of describing human interaction, anonymity and the power of stillness

- her videos and installations blur boundaries between aesthetic and transcendent experience through repetitive actions: doing laundry and sewing, everyday actions.

A Sacred Soliloquy

Deductive Object VI

                         

'Bottari Truck', 2000- Rodin Gallery

                               - " In her 1997 video work Cities on the Move - 2727 km bottari truck, she traveled throughout the countryside of Korea for 11 days in a small truck piled with bottaris in the back. Kim moved often when she was a child because her father, who was a serviceman, had frequent job transfers. In that sense, Cities on the move is a travel through the memories of her own childhood. At the same time, it is a metaphor for her current state of being, an artist who constantly travels for work to different places in the world, and the work expresses the sensibilities of "on the move" and "itinerant" inherent in the bottari. When the video portion of the work, accompanied by the bottari truck, were shown at the 1998 Bienal do Sao Paolo and the 1999 La Biennale di Venezia, Kimsooja became known in the art world as the so-called bottari artist who poses the questions of identity, mobility, borderlessness, and nomadism."

                      

Needle Woman 1999-2001

                  

"Encounter–Looking Into Sewing," 1998-2002

Sweeny Crit-#4

Kris Kuksi -Ryan Haney

Kris Kuksi

Kuksi is an assemblage artist who was born on March 2, 1973 in Springfield, Missouri. He was the youngest of three children and was raised by a single mother. Growing up, his family wasn't very economically stable; one effect that this had on Kuksi was the lack of cable television. In fact, he claims that the only channel he would ever watch was PBS, Kuksi believes that watching PBS throughout his childhood ended up fueling his creativity, since all that was on the channel was educational documentaries and, as Kuksi calls it, "British stuff", like Monty Python. "If it hadn't been that way" he says, "I probably wouldn't be doing what I'm doing".

Early drawing by Kuksi

Early on, Kuksi focused on Gothic-inspired drawings and basic realism in his paintings. Currently, however, he is focusing more on sculpture.

Plague Parade by Kuksi

His work falls under the genre of "Fantastic Realism", and utilizes surrealistic aspects along with assemblage art. Kuksi utilizes found objects in his work, such as dollhouse parts, miniature army toys and jewelry, along with other objects. However, despite his focus on collecting found objects, he is not afraid to spend in order to get what he wants for his work. Kuksi recently purchased an eight-foot tall sculpture of a giraffe that he plans to incorporate into a new piece. After retrieving his materials, he then distorts them in any way he pleases in order to create large and elaborate compositions. He also uses wood and metal scraps.

Table of random objects used by Kuksi

Currently, Kuksi works out of a studio that is built into a church in North Lawrence, Ohio. He makes his work in order to portray narratives, while also working with the idea of polarity. He plays with the contrasts between light and dark, masculine and feminine, good and evil, etc. When it comes to his narratives, Kuski likes to leave the meaning up to the viewer, saying "If you don't have the full puzzle together, it's a little bit more interesting, because your mind gets to fill the gaps...You're just going to tell part of the story".

Kuksi making an allusion to Michelangelo's Creation of Adam

Kuksi's work will soon be featured in a solo show titled "Kris Kuksi. New Works" at the Lawrence Arts Center; it will be his first solo exhibition.

Untitled, unfinished piece.

Close up of one of Kuksi's sculptures, giving more insight to his materials and detailing work.

Churchtanks: Kuksi comments on the relationship between war and religion.