Shinae Kim 《Configuration-Event》
The concept of space-time organises the abstract world into recognisable units. Through these units, we can sense the here and now and conceive of a range of immaterial information. For example, a line is a de facto notion of scope: it cannot exist on its own, but borrows from the handwriting to reveal the path of the artist's hand, functions as a boundary between the inside and outside of an object, or appears in folds of space, such as wall-to-wall, to make us aware of the dimension on which we are stepping. But humans have an inevitable habit of being drawn to the essentials, so sometimes the infinite seems rather intuitive. The light that has travelled through time appears as a single point of light called a star, and the endless depths of space appear to us on Earth as a coloured plane called the sky. To perceive is not just to know something, but to continue thinking through the object. Shinae Kim explores the moment when time and space take form, and the unknown information that gave rise to that moment. Here and now, a ‘Configuration-Event’ occurs as digital configurations and natural materials, veneer, interact in the space of the exhibition. Patterns are traces of flows, possessing movement and variability, but they are also concentrations of information. An event occurs when a number of unpredictable and coincidental elements intersect. Form emerges at the intersection of past and future. Patterned Events explores the moment when small, unrecognised elements are revealed as temporary and accidental shapes.
For Kim, an event is revealed when spatial and temporal elements created by chance and without causality intersect. In this sense, for her, form is not permanent, but rather a temporary stay in the flowing space-time, an eternally variable concept that can be experienced differently depending on the point of view. However, an event that has already occurred is irreversible and can stand alone, and as a fragment of time, it becomes a node that extends the structure. Kim's work begins with a careful exploration of the events latent in the form and the elements underlying the image. The process of appropriation begins with the site of the event. The artist's efforts to re-sensitise space and time through latent elements are practiced by converting the lines (ranges) on architectural plans into sounds that respond to movement, revealing them as events that disappear or change at the moment of perceiving space, or by visualising and re-sensitising the components of the site, time, specifications, errors, and information that cannot be grasped by the eye through various methods. In this exhibition, Kim conceives of veneer as a plane in which forms, events, and information are intertwined and generated. The memories of wood are created in various forms and fibres according to differences in season, nutritional status, temperature, and humidity. The memories of swallowing hot, humid air in midsummer, groping through dry soil to find water, and embracing sunlight as it pierced through the leaves are etched into the tree's skin. The organic information acquired by the tree is recorded as a pattern, which in turn relates to the space of Hall 1 and the event of the exhibition, revealing the structure of the tree's information as a thin surface.
Digital materials cannot have tangibility, but the absence of a physical body allows the viewer to focus more on the meaning of the image itself and function as pure and unbounded information. Since 2021, Kim has been actively utilising digital materials to flexibly continue her research into temporality, space and form. Through digital materials, the artist explores pure form and information that temporarily frees time and space from physical constraints and allows us to perceive (or be perceived) them. Within every form lies a world deeper than the borders that surround it.
Soyoung Moon (Curator, PS Sarubia)