EUNGYUNG KIM Breath Installation and watercolour paintings 8.1 - 25.1.2009 Breath on cold winter window forms a circle in white; dresses form a circle with lights inside. Time to time in my life-long journey, I think of a dance called “Gang-gang-sulle”. Women gather hand in hand under the autumn full moon forming a big circle. The circle goes around celebrating the full moon and harvest of the year. Through the gestures and movements of the dance I reflect on connection between a woman to another, in the community, with the seasons, nature and the world at large. In the dark winter in Finland, I wanted to think about the light we long for – physically and spiritually-, the light we carry and the light we share with one another. The Korean dresses (Hanbok) appear often in my work. They are empty yet carry presence within. They are fragile like our mortal lives yet translucent to suggest the immortal spirit inside. They are white both as the funeral clothing in Korea and as the robes of cleansed saints in the book of Revelation. Once more they speak of mortality and immortality; earthly and heavenly; temporality and eternity. The series of paintings, “Breathing of the Mountains” developed through an experience of seeing glacier on the mountains that meets the sky. The glacier melts to moist the land and the moisture from atmosphere is gathered to become glacier again. This timeless process made me think of it as “breathing”. Somewhere between our lifespan of breathings and eternity lies a time scale of these mountains that have seen many of our lives passing through. EUNGYUNG KIM
e-mail:eungyungkim(at)gmail.com |