Arts Council Korea has organized ARKO Creative Academy from 2016
with a purpose to discover emerging artists and improve the creative
competence of the artists. ARKO Creative Academy is a program that
integrates the previous programs such as ARKO Young Art Frontier
and Creative Academy, supporting research and creative activities of
artists aged under 35 in seven fields including literature, visual art, and
theatre etc.
"The Moving Day," opening in December 23, 2016 at Insa Art Space, is
an exhibition of two artists - Daum Kim and Min Jeong Kim - who have
completed ARKO Creative Academy's visual art (artist) course. The
artists will present new works based on the researches that started
from early this year.
“The Moving Day" begins with the artists' moving days. In this exhibition,
the term of ‘moving’ indicates an act of moving to another residence,
with a specific space as a presupposition. These artists have begun
their work with particular spaces that have been left behind or to which
one has newly moved to. Yet, interestingly, the ways they perceive and
represent the space are different from each other. One of the definitions
of ‘space’ is "a sphere that is spread physically or psychologically."
  Daum Kim has found out that the house he had newly moved
into had been on a land-locked property; the ground on which the
house stood is without a point of contact with the road, completely
surrounded by other people's lands. He has had to put up with crossing
someone else's land with their permission in order to come in and out
of the house. After unpacking, passing across the neighbor's parking
lot and garden, he has came to reflect on his living situation. And he
has decided to develop this situation to a concept that elaborates the
state and mentality of an individual surrounded by diverse social
environment and conditions.
Three young narrators of "Blind Land" are each from Hong Kong, Taipei,
and Seoul. They confide to one another on their circumstances and the
psychological state by letter. They are all isolated, or land-locked. They
are in a situation where they cannot take control over the reality around
them. The artist recognizes how the sentiment of three narrators are
not far away from those that we get from the relationship we have with
our society. The artist attempts to demonstrate the city through the
particular sentiments that surround it.
Min Jeong Kim's work constantly evolves around the house she used
to live in. The artist has had to move due to the redevelopment project
and witnessed her house and neighbor's get emptied and destroyed.
A vacant space with all the furniture and supplies removed and
the concrete and iron bar within a crumbling building had always
been around us. Yet they were hidden behind something or stayed
invisible. The experience of witnessing something that was present yet
unperceivable is the departure of her work. The artist, in this context,
creates a space that seems to be hidden, invisible in reality, or in a
new dimension by restructuring the objects that was used to be in her
previous home. As such, the artist experiments with various means to
represent space.
   The most important components of Min Jeong Kim's work in this
exhibition are light and shadow. The artist draws a variety of spaces
that are related to the house on the mirror or a slate of transparent
acrylic. Then she casts light on it to make the shadow. Material such
as mirror, acrylic, light, or shadow loosens the rigid perspective on
the physical space while functioning as a mediator that widens the
possibility of new forms and the horizon of perception. The form of the
shadow changes depending on the light's angle and type. When the form
transforms into the shadow, it gets exaggerated, faded, or distorted. The
artist uses such visual effects to present the experience of opening up
to a new perception on the physical aspect of her space(house).
The works of these artists can be viewed in relation to the definition of
space as a physical or psychological sphere. Yet these two aspects of
space are not clearly distinguished in reality. On the one hand, Daum
Kim employs the physical aspect of the city such as the building, street,
and people in order to represent the mentality that is involved in space.
On the other hand, Min Jeong Kim reflects the motions and memories on
the physical space to represent the physical aspect. Through the artists'
perspectives that show an interesting contrast, "The Moving Day" will
put forth an experience of drastic ambivalence of space.