Tae Kim: WEST PALM BEACH | SALON

내자식의n번쨰 손가락_My Child’s n-th Finger

 

Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery is proud to present a presentation of new paintings by the Korean artist Tae Kim whose practice explores the evolving relationship between the physical human body and our digital selves as well as our connection to the natural world. Titled 내자식의n번쨰손가락_My Child’s n-th Finger, the exhibition, taking place in the gallery’s Salon space, expands on Kim’s explorations into a hybrid form of humanity, specifically questioning what we can touch and what tactility might mean in the digital age. As she imagines new and shifting forms of figuration, Kim relates the portrait painting process to giving birth. The intimacy and labour of the act of creation is referenced by the show’s title which also conveys the idea of an evolving process or an unknowable future, which has the potential to be transformative as well as monstrous.

 

In this latest series, she envisions a collision between the natural and the artificial, articulating the ways in which anxieties around technological advancements are intertwined with the climate crisis and a broader sense of losing control. Take, for instance, the painting Fishing for nets which depicts two hybrid elfin-like figures swept up by a wave of water along with creatures and plants dredged up from the bottom of the sea. At a first glance, it seems to be an almost mythological scene, but the closer we look, we can identify familiar images of pollution and disease. The figure at the front of the painting is spouting a stream of water from its mouth while the one at the back is tangled in rope with a rubber ring around their neck. A family of turtles has plastic straws hanging out of their mouths, a dolphin is caught in barbed wire, a seagull has a blue pill between its beak. In Korea, Kim notes, the rise in temperatures and prevalence of trash in the oceans has created a new environment which is bringing in non-native wildlife and resulting in almost other-worldly hybridities. The figures, like the animals, are caught up in and distorted by that process of transformation almost to the point of monstrosity.

 

Farming pests also highlights the impacts of pollution alongside forest reduction and ground poisoning, which pose a major threat to the farming industry in Korea. The painting once again depicts two figures entrapped in a kind of net, this time alongside common pests: water deer, moles, mice and vines. The implication is clear: that humans are also pests, the source of the imbalance which has led to dramatic changes in our natural environment. As in all of the paintings in the series, there is a juxtaposition between the ancient and the contemporary, between the materiality of the work and Kim’s delicate painting technique and the seemingly futuristic nature of her imagery. It is this clash that provokes a sense of unease: we find ourselves searching for resolution that we can’t quite ever seem to reach.