notes on work

The titles of the paintings come from sentences by Eudora Welty - a southern states of America short story writer of the 1920's. The paintings' images are not illustrations of the titles. The title and the image hold autonomous positions to themselves but because they have been placed in relationship the space between them has the opportunity to generate potential. This space can only be activated by the viewer and only if they so wish. Kim of course is also a viewer. One is called on to be responsible to oneself, to decide what one feels, what one thinks, to leave or to begin.

The majority of paintings by Kim are on hardboard found in demolition yards or building sites. The hardboard is an example of an 'indexical sign' - a sign which is a trace of its own cause. The interesting thing about the indexical sign is that it resists coding, this makes of it in its initial being an unknown to language and therefore a free space, it is an imprint of the 'real'. The boards are not damaged as such but bring an impressed history with them and their own kind of 'real'.

"...the boards are a marvelous example of the indexical sign. i always did feel uneasy when people considered them as 'damaged'. this was not their appeal to me. their appeal was this imprint of this unpresupposed 'real' (it is a space that i have always 'felt' and liked and fell into and am at home with, long before coming across any theorisation of it) because of its lack of code i think of it as a political space therefore and full of possibilities because it has not been defined as of yet. it makes me feel free if only for a moment. and i love it..."

Kim's working process begins with an empty page or board and she works the space with colour & marking until the field becomes 'necessary', that is finished. It is almost an egoless activity. An appeal to say look at this rather than look at me. However she responds deliberately to the play of chance and with much respect toward it. She holds herself responsible.

"...the chance movement of paint, of a mark made peripherally, out of the corner of my eye, to the side of my brain. these are also indexical signs. I begin with these and then i choose. choosing is deliberate. is coded. is my code. is my will to composition. it will be this board and not another, i will allow this flow and not another. this mark and not another. i work with these imprints of the real. i deliberately make my own marks in relation."

"...could i say in a very broad sense it is a relationship, a form of play between chance and deliberation, between culture and nature? respect is given to both. a relationship is formed in the work and produces an atmosphere that has affect, is unnameable yet has become somehow necessary"

Giorgio Agamben is a contemporary Italian philosopher whom Kim enjoys very much. The drawings titles refer to an essay he wrote called 'The Thing Itself' www.iep.utm.edu/agamben/