Story

Working with Korean mulberry paper, Kim creates a language of abstraction that emphasizes the materiality of paper and its relationship to nature and the body. Story belongs to an eponymous series begun in the mid-2000s that took its formal inspiration from the stacked books in Kim’s library in Milan. The grid-like pattern is formed by meticulously pasting thin paper strips with lightly burned edges, tightly arranged with an overlap, onto a thicker sheet of paper. The varying tones of the paper and their burned marks represent the most important aspects of Kim’s art and practice: accumulation and repetition, chance and transformation through the process of burning. With the innovative use of paper, a heritage material associated with rituals, craft, and intellectual histories, as both primary subject and medium, Kim creates a minimalist composition with optical intrigue.