Gallery 2 presents the solo show of Seungjoo Kim who has worked with the motif of the ruler in diverse mediums. At the show Kim displays 10 three-dimensional works using each separate gradation of a ruler. Viewers are induced to have firsthand experience of escaping the frame of their perception in the space where the size and form of the ruler, offering absolute standards in human society, appears enlarged.

The symbolism of a ruler as a criterion of human society

Kim has consistently worked with the motif of the ruler for 10 years. The work of using a ruler as an object; three-dimensional installations made of enlarged rulers; and video work generating virtual experience in the space where rulers move, show his diverse attempts. Her primary expression is minimalistic in that her work does not use any modified, damaged original images of the ruler, composed only with gradations and figures from zero to nine. Kim takes note of the fact that the measurements of a yardstick for are equally applied to all. The measure is a symbol with absolute power in human society since if the gradations and figures on a ruler are distorted, all measurements might be wrong. Inspired by nameplates engraved with mother of pearl, Kim uses this unique material, mother of pearl, for the gradations of rulers. She feels the nameplates reflecting one’s position and identity with characters and signs coincide with the concept of rulers.

Criterion for infinite possibility

The kernel of Kim’s work is enlarging the size of rulers and arranging figures irregularly. By doing this she breaks down our fixed notions of rulers represented by accuracy and norm. The rulers modified by Her subjective criteria become ambiguous objects losing their original function and meaning. In this exhibition our experience of these ‘odd rulers’ is spatially extended. Ten pieces made with disassembled gradations of the rulers are displayed in every corner of the venue, on the walls and floor. Each work has a different form, color, and size. What we can know through the rulers is an object’s relative size’, not ‘absolute figures’. In this space viewers may feel their sizes are not fixed but variable. They can also experience an infinite expansion of unrestricted imagination in the place where the rules and regulations of reality are shattered. Moreover, ‘a normal ruler’with no distorted ratio of gradations is added to all the works. This is a conceptual trick, “A ruler measures another ruler.”