Exhibition Information

Exhibition view

Exhibition view

Exhibition view

Exhibition view

			The PIBI GALLERY presents the solo exhibition of Kim Heeyoung, Cloud¸ from November 14th, 2019 until January 11th, 2020. Kim’s focus has been about things that are easily obtained, used, and thrown away once they lose their functional value, such as cheap disposable containers and plastic bag wrapping materials. In her previous works, she has transformed these one-time consumables into sturdy tiles or ceramic pieces, or has reconstructed them into geometrical patterns, thereby bringing “useless and readily discarded things” into the exhibit space.

Through her new exhibition Cloud, Kim expands on the critical perspective that was present in her previous works regarding a consumptive behavior that is fixated only on utility. The geometric patterns created by repeating the shapes of the everyday consumables and disposable products come back to us in the form of a natural scenery of the sky and clouds. Under the design of the artist, ceramic tiles in two different sizes become connected and reveal their relationship, coming together to form the clouds as well as the sky.

Disposable items produced with utility as their first and foremost value, are then even more actively thrown away once they have served their purpose. Kim has maintained a stance of deeming modern society’s over-production, imprudent consumption, and the worthlessly discarding of things to be somewhat unfortunate, rather than just viewing it with a critical eye. Going through the firing process of a kiln, everyday consumables and disposable products that are made into mold casted ceramics acquire an entirely different surface, firmness, and color than what they used to possess, and together the transformed compose a rather sophisticated order within a repetitive pattern, and become part of a new geometrical formation.

As the basic material for her new exhibition Cloud, Kim uses an existing tile product, and the overall pattern design the tiles make up does not come from the various product wrappings but rather from the ad texts and company logos taken from them, which are just as meaningless as the wrappings themselves. Without having the materialistic qualities of product wrappings, the instant product ad slogans like “Enjoy whenever and wherever possible,’’ “Have youth, Korea’ “Hot Hot,” and “OK in 3 mins!” come across as being inconsequential and empty symbols.

Kim takes the leftover material form “signifier” letters devoid of any concepts “signified” and reorders them using a computer graphics program, before repeatedly copying them layer- upon-layer on top of the tiles. The notable point of this piece is what these numerous layers of text-covered tiles ultimately reveal - the image of the sky and clouds they compose is not that of “consumption” or “capitalism,” but one of nature and a landscape.

Kim’s new piece Cloud leaves behind a different kind of a track compared to her previous works that were about forming regular patterns that seemed to be based on a specific order and rule. The artist brings out the sky – the most sacred of subjects, an entity that is everlasting but fickle to change – using the lowliest, trash-worthy of things. The scene of the sky the artist creates using the text-filled rectangular tiles is a mixture of light blue and grey colors, with abnormally shaped clouds dotting the canvas surface here and there.

The sky is something we look up to from the ground, and one that is sort of an “empty area” that lies between us on Earth, and the space beyond. It is a world we cannot physically grasp, a gap of an area that we can only come to being remotely close to, even partially at that, though the unordinary act of flying on a plane. But though unreachable, it does definitely exists. Kim takes on as a motif disposable products, one of the most familiar objects that are also considered as being one of the most worthless things, product wrappings, that are symbolic of the structure of instant consumption and distribution, and plastic wrapping materials, that are so very easily obtainable thereby deemed just as insignificant, and attempts to visualize a living entity or sorts that is as expansive and eternal thing as nature, in the form of something as breathing and changing as the sky and clouds no less, to stir up our surroundings. 

Through the Cloud exhibition, the PIBI GALLERY brings to viewers Kim’s new work, in which she weaves together a natural scenery of the sky and clouds based on reality. The 4-meter long expansive work is not only a feat the artist has accomplished through this exhibition, but it may also come as a refreshing and spectacular display for the audience. Departing from the artist viewing “useless things” with pity, Kim’s work is being rewritten into an entirely new narrative about the “sky,” as the fragments derived from consumer culture are put through the process of being reconstructed.