Seoul, July 20 – September 3, 2016, http://www.songeunartspace.org
Liquids and their physical properties have been the main object of research of Yunchul Kim 김윤철. Each floor of the exhibition space featured different kinds of experiments with their material properties, density, viscosity and crystal formation. The aesthetic effect was fascinating. The projects have been somewhere on the borderline between art and science. It made one ponder where the boundary between disciplines was. Maybe there wasn’t any. The object of observation may be the same, it is just the viewpoint that is different. Does one observe in order to describe and produce models of the molecular properties? Or does one observe in order to trace out the shapes and lines drawn by natural processes in motion? Both points of view aim in the end for the same: getting a glimpse at our own selves and the molecules we are made of.
In addition to the liquid experiments, a section showed the artist’s sketches, as well as a large “auto portrait” made by a careful handwriting of each and every ASCII character of what has probably been a JPEG image of the artist. This further confirmed the just mentioned: The research endeavor was first and foremost a search for questions that are larger than us, an attempt to make sense of who we are and where we are going, from a first-person perspective of the artist. This also explains the fascination, similar to the fascination with the moving sand “hourglass” images that have been popular for a period of time and that I have been reminded of in this works. It is a fascination with the possibility to observe time passing when liquids are mixed or when a solidified version of the time that has passed and left behind traces in the form of crystals is put on display.
