Gallery EM is proud to present a solo exhibition by Si Yeon Kim, entitled Cup. This is the artist’s second solo show at the gallery, following her first exhibition in 2008. Since graduating from Ehwa Woman’s University and School of Visual Arts, NY, Si Yeon Kim has held more than 10 solo shows and participated in various group exhibitions, presenting works that range from video-based and photographic art to installation pieces. Having focused on seemingly insignificant objects and the inherent alienation and isolation of being in her past works, Kim now addresses the absence of communication and the healing of such absence in her new series, Cup.
Kim uses ordinary objects to lyrically unfold stories of the anxiety and isolation felt by many women at home after marriage. From the Barricade (2008) series, in which everyday products such as salt, soap, and glass bottles are used to build barricades within a house, to Houseware (2013), which presents various household items that have lost their original shapes through daily use, most of Kim’s works examine the anxiety and isolation felt by housewives who have lost their identities by devoting themselves to the roles of wives and mothers.
The artist captures moments associated with the commonplace items she encounters everyday in her ‘home,’ which reflect her inner feelings. Kim’s works from 2004 to 2012, in which domestic scenes are filled with objects, amplify the emptiness and depression felt by the artist. In Barricade-Thorn, for example, a house is besieged by Ivory soap, carved in the shape of thorns, and A House in Depression represents a house full of salt cones made of a mixture of salt and water. Kim’s repetitive acts of carving and piling objects paradoxically represent her constant struggle to maintain her identity as an artist.
Kim’s new series, Cup, is derived from a common greeting in Korea: “Let’s have a cup of tea some time.” Although this phrase literally constitutes a promise to meet again, Kim uses the ambiguity of the word “cup” (jan in Korean) to metaphorically express the meaninglessness and waste of such superficial greetings. Jan refers to a vessel that contains water, alcoholic drinks, or tea. It is also a numerical unit used to count cups of tea, and an adjective meaning ‘thin,’ ‘small,’ or ‘trivial.’ In her work Cup, Siyeon Kim tries to heal the void created by insincere greetings by depicting a cup of tea that cannot be drunk.
The healing method Kim suggests is composed of five elements: an empty cup, a realistic but not a real plant, an unstable platform, a quiet space, and the act of waiting. A cup, devoid of its original function, is balanced precariously on a small table, about to fall. The cup quietly awaits somebody’s arrival. The scene is full of white objects and depicts paper leaves in artificial colors, extending the real place shown in the picture into a psychological dimension, and representing poetically the unrealistic promise that will not be kept and the deferral of the expected meeting.
Kim’s new series, which intimately explores the absence of communication in scenes of daily life, will console those wounded by this absence and provide viewers with the opportunity to experience new forms of sympathy and communication.
*image (left)
courtesy of the artist and Gallery em
