Soun-Gui Kim

Kim Soun-Gui (, b. 1946) is a South Korean multimedia artist based in France. Kim was born in Buyeo, South Korea. After graduating from the College of Fine Arts at Seoul National University in 1971, she moved to France to pursue further study in semiology, philosophy, and aesthetics. She began teaching in 1973 as a professor at the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Marseille from 1974 until 2000, and then the Ecole Nationale Superieure d’Art, Dijon from 2001-2011.

Kim moves across different mediums, including video, drawing, painting, performance, installation, photography, sculpture, and calligraphy to create her work. Her expansive practice is conceptually-driven, leading her to use a wide range of mediums to explore ideas in philosophy, engage with political and social issues, and collaborate with a wide range of thinkers, artists, and performers. Kim's emphasis on openness and play dominate much of her work, allowing her to shift between and blend different references from different times and places, involve multiple participants in performances and installations, and explore the formal possibilities of both new and old mediums ranging from video to calligraphy.

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) presented the first major retrospective of Kim's work in Korea from 2019-2020 that later traveled to the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe from 2022-3. The show title "Soungui Kim: Lazy Clouds" refers to the title of a poem Kim wrote, the name of the book of poetry she published in France, and a self-assigned nickname the artist has used since college. The title also hints at the positive connotations of laziness as a means of engaging in philosophical and creative play.

Early life Kim was born in 1946 in Buyeo, Chungnam, South Korea. She grew up in Daejeon, and then Seoul. Kim's mother was a well-known calligrapher and painter exhibiting work under the name Sang Man, and Kim's grandfather practiced calligraphy as well. She was also exposed to photography and film at a young age due to her uncle who studied photography in Japan, and worked in the film industry. After graduating from high school, Kim continued taking danso lessons at the National Music Center. Archery and the colors related to it would appear in her work in the early 70s, such as Ten Thousand Ugly Ink Dots (1982).

Education Kim completed her undergraduate and graduate studies at the College of Fine Arts at Seoul National University from 1966-71. Her classmates included artist Sung Wankyung and architect Chung Guyon.

In 1974, she became a professor at the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Marseille. She also taught at Ecole Nationale d’Art Décoratif, Nice from 1974-5, and Ecole Nationale Superieure d’Art, Dijon from 2001-2011. Scholar Jean-Michel Rabaté credits Kim with showing students in cities across France the potential of video art in unprecedented ways.

Video art Kim created her first video work in 1971-3 titled Il-Ki (Journal) with an 8mm movie camera, and continued to create video works with an 8mm movie camera she purchased in 1973, or video cameras she borrowed. After meeting artists like John Cage and Nam June Paik in the late 70s, and purchasing a video camera in 1983, Kim shifted towards working primarily with video. Kim's linkage between newer mediums like video with artistic practices with longer histories, such as calligraphy, both allows the artist to think of multimedia art expansively, and is a direct result of technological advances—the accessibility and portability of camcorders fundamentally changed how Kim created video art.

Space Time (1975, 2008, 2019) Kim created a performance for the festival celebrating the 100th issue of the Korean magazine Space. For the 1975 of this performance, she recorded the movements of participating performers with drawings. The 2008 version at Art Sonje Center featured a Buddhist priest, curator, and cellist, and the 2019 iteration at the National Museum for Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) centered on Kim, a robot named Younghee, and shaman Kim Mihwa.

Kim's interest in the philosophical aspects of art extends to her conceptions of medium forms as well. When discussing her work "Dream of Butterfly (Songe d’un papillon)" (1992) centered on the funeral for a Buddhist monk, Kim compares video as a medium to the Daoist and Buddhist concept of "emptiness":"Video is nothing but a 'shining empty vessel,' a 'vessel to fold time'; video is nothing but timing and energy. Video is X time of the frequency of an electron; one video image is composed of one twenty-fifth of second. Video is pure movement of timing and the life itself is nothing but how to use everyday time. Therefore video is life, use of time." Kim's linkage of video and the temporality of the living world offers an expansive understanding of the medium that moves beyond its technological functions.

Interaction with and influences from other artists Kim first heard about Fluxus through artist Ben Vautier, who lived in her neighborhood in France, and she became familiar with the artists' work through the head of Ecole de Nice Jacques Lepage.

Critical reception For the first few decades of her career, Kim was largely unknown in the Korean art world, exhibiting primarily outside of Korea. In 1995, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) tried to work with Kim to take part in the exhibition for their "Artist of the Year" program, but the project fell through during negotiations. While Kim exhibited in other venues in Korea, Korean audiences had little exposure to the broad scope of her oeuvre until the 2019-2020 solo exhibition "Soungui Kim: Lazy Clouds" at MMCA.

Art critic Hye-jin Mun describes a consistency in Kim's oeuvre exemplified by the key words" play, process, situation, the everyday, coincidence, non/sense, inaction, loss of self, and paradox. But Mun also notes the difficulty of categorizing and broadly contextualizing Kim's work given her uniqueness in relation to the Korean and French art scenes.

Select exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

"Soun Gui Kim" (American Cultural Center, Seoul, 1975) "Soun Gui Kim" (Gallery Kyeon-Ji, Seoul, 1977) "Ten thousand ugly ink dots" (Galerie DAAD, Berlin, 1985) "Soun Gui Kim" (Galerie Donguy, Paris, 1988) "Passages" (Centre d’Art Contemporain, Troyes, France, 1989) "0 Time" (Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain de Nice, Nice, 1991) "Station 0 Time" (Korean Institute of Industrial Technology, Cheonan, Korea, 1996) "Stock Exchange I" (La Maison du Livre d’Artiste Contemporain, Domart en Ponthieu, 1999) "Stock Exchange II" (Art Sonje Center, Seoul, 2001) "P.A.P." (Galerie Lara Vincy, Paris, 2001) "Stock Exchange III" (La Maison de l’Art et de la Communication de Sallaumine, Sallaumine, 2001) "Points de vue" (Galerie de/di/dY, Paris, 2005) "Soun Gui Kim/Films" (The Film Gallery, Paris, 2006) "Soun-Gui Kim" (Platform Seoul, Gallery Ye Mec, Seoul, 2008) "Stock+Garden," (Gallery 175, Seoul, 2008) "Beating the market: Soun-Gui Kim in dialogue with Cage, Derrida, and Nancy" (Slought Foundation, Philadelphia, 2013) "Lunes, Où, Par-dessus le marché, Silence" (Art Sonje Center, Seoul, 2014) "Kim Soun-gui: 0 Time" (Arario Gallery, Seoul, 2018) "Soun-Gui Kim: Lazy Clouds" (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Seoul, 2019-2020; ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, 2022-2023)

Group exhibitions

"Contemporary art festival, Space 75" (National Theater of Myeongdong, Seoul, 1975) "Rencontre Internationale de la Photographie" (Arles, 1995) "Gwangju Biennale PAUSE" (Gwangju, Korea, 2002) "Past in reverse" (Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas; Hood Museum, Depaul University, Indiana; Dartmouth College, New Hampshire; Hanover Peeler Art Center, Hanover, 2005) "Media City Seoul 2010" (Seoul History Museum, Seoul, 2010) "Asian Film & Video Art Forum" (MMCA, Seoul, 2015) "Is it morning for you yet: The 58th Carnegie International" (Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, 2022)