Concentrations
58
chosil kil Sweaty Sun February 20–August 2, 2015
Chosil Kil is a storyteller. Or, more accurately, she is an artist who creates or displays objects that are imbued with the story of their making. Drawing on her own personal history, the artist weaves tales—both real and fictional—that breathe life into otherwise mute, static objects. But like most skilled narrators, Kil never divulges all her secrets, providing instead just enough detail to pique her audience’s interest and keep them guessing, engaged, and wanting more. Often with just a title and a list of materials provided to them, viewers are required to investigate further, piecing together visual clues in a conceptual game of connect-the-dots. Kil’s network of references is enigmatic and at times difficult to follow, pulling equally from obscure aspects of the artist’s native Korean culture and her daily life as a Londoner. A Korean mudan (a shaman-priestess) is just as likely to be the protagonist in the artwork’s creation as the goalkeeper from a local soccer match, creating an aura around the work that is at once esoteric and quotidian. As a result, Kil’s practice enjoys a constant state of tension that exists between a work’s physical being and the surrounding, invisible forces at play. Born in Seoul in 1975, Kil was educated at London’s Royal College of Art. Following a brief period as a member of the artist collective Janfamily, during which she contributed a series of propositions to the group’s publication-manifesto, Plans for Other Days (2005), Kil began her artistic career with a shift away from situational proposals and events to concentrate on creating objects. Part sculpture, part found object, Kil’s early work from the late 2000s consists mainly of souvenirs and relics sourced from the artist’s private life, her family history, or antiquity. In this earlier body of work, each object functions as a vessel of sorts that contains narratives and secrets of its making. More recently, however, the artist has made a shift away from object-specific anecdotes, focusing instead on the exhibition itself as a narrative platform. Since 2011, Kil has explored an increasingly performative aspect of her practice. In particular, her One Hour Long Exhibition series, executed in collaboration with artist Marie Lund, is a hybrid exhibition format that doubles as a performance event. Spontaneous and fleeting in nature, this work stems from the artists’ attempt to break through the static nature of the standard exhibition and find novel ways of incorporating their bodies while doing so. The result is an exhibition format in which the artists and audience enter the space together with all associated works. The artists unpack and install or perform the works, and then repack everything and leave the space, all within the allotted hour-long timeframe. For the 2012 One Hour Long Exhibition at Shanaynay in Paris, Kil wrote a script that was read using the standard Apple computer voiceover software, known as Alex, a performance that lasted exactly one hour, including gaps of silence. The voice told stories, and at other times instructed Kil on what to do in the space, such as singing aloud. Such improvisations serve as a counterpoint to Kil’s sculptural practice and have paved the way for more open-ended installations that incorporate the body into the exhibition space in unlikely ways. Building on the performative nature of the One Hour Long Exhibition series, the artist eventually arrived at her most recent and recognizable work, Ducks and Drakes (2014). First presented at the show Niagara at Rowing Projects in London, the work consists of a room populated with large blue latex balloons filled with helium. The balloons are each tethered to the ground by a single piece of thread tied to an aluminum disc, keeping the balloons station-
ary when still, but free to move throughout the space when reacting to air currents or the motions of visitors. In addition, the balloons are counterbalanced with coins that are bound together and tied in a knot. This bundle of coins keeps the balloon sculptures from floating away and is specific to the location of the work’s installation (pounds in the United Kingdom, won in Korea, yen in Japan, etc.). As helium gradually escapes from the balloons, coins must be released from the bundles in order to maintain the proper buoyancy. Kil intended the installation to transform the space into what she imagined to be a body of water. Its title, Ducks and Drakes, refers not only to waterfowl but also to the game of skipping flat stones over the surface of water. In the press release Kil penned to accompany the exhibition, the artist alludes to the latter reference in a poetic way, linking the act of finding loose change in one’s couch with the act of throwing coins into Rome’s Trevi Fountain for good luck. Kil has authored similar texts for each of her subsequent solo exhibitions (Chosil Kil: The Eagle Has Landed at AOYAMA | MEGURO in Tokyo and Kiss & Fly at ONE AND J. Gallery in Seoul, both in 2014), a practice the artist describes as a “measured counterpoint” to the exhibition proper. According to Kil, “The text neither explains nor confirms, but creates a new narrative that sits apart, framing the intersection of the work on display.” 1 More so than any of Kil’s previous work, Ducks and Drakes embodies a performative aspect that requires the viewer’s presence to activate the work. Entering the exhibition space, the viewer is greeted by a host of round surrogate bodies. As Kil describes it, “When someone walks into the room, each component of Ducks and Drakes responds. . . . All the elements of the piece begin to operate. It can be read as saying hello by dancing with the visitor.” 2 Any movement by the viewer begins a gently choreographed interplay between subject and object—they are both performers. The balloons, floating at roughly shoulder height, shimmy in the wake of each passerby. The material properties of the sculptures resemble the human body in a number of ways. While the round balloons simulate an oversized head, the thread acts as a spine, and the aluminum disc can be read as a foot. The latex is itself a kind of skin, and the helium is the breath that gives life to the sculpture. When one stands still in the gallery space, these helium-filled doppelgängers congregate around the viewer, their spherical shapes altering the ambient noise of the gallery in a way that strangely mimics being underwater. While there is a history of using balloons throughout pop and conceptual art, which includes the likes of Andy Warhol, Roman Signer, and Martin Creed, Kil’s sculptures seem to resonate most closely with Italian proto-conceptual artist Piero Manzoni’s Fiato d’artista (Artist’s Breath) series (1959/1960). In these works, Manzoni inflated individual colored balloons with his own breath and affixed them to a wooden base that was embossed with the artist’s name and the title of the work. Here, the conceptual act of creation became synonymous with the artist breathing life into the object. According to Manzoni, “When I blow up a balloon, I am breathing my soul into an object that thus becomes eternal.”3 While conceptually eternal, the air would eventually dissipate, leaving the limp, empty balloon to disintegrate over time, resulting in an apt memento mori that reflected on the fleeting nature of life. For Concentrations 58 at the Dallas Museum of Art—the artist’s first US museum solo show— Kil has reinterpreted her pneumatic sculptures based on her recent travels throughout Texas and the Southwest. Titled Sweaty Sun, the exhibition transforms the DMA’s Stoffel Gallery
into an intimidating landscape of oversized geometric cubes and triangular forms. Inspired by the beautiful yet inhospitable terrain of Big Bend National Park, these minimal forms corral viewers into the space while obscuring what lies around the corner, similar to the dramatic canyons of Big Bend. Throughout the park, the artist encountered warnings to be on the lookout for mountain lions, and this unseen threat is now embodied through several life-size Sandicast dog sculptures scattered throughout the exhibition. Somewhat comically, a large white English Bulldog sits atop the stacked geometric forms, providing a kitsch, domesticated substitute for the wild threat of nature. In contrast to the uninviting architectural structures are Kil’s familiar balloon sculptures, which have been retitled Sunday (2015) for the current exhibition. Unlike Ducks and Drakes, which referenced water with its palette of blue and silver balloons, Sunday begins with the color gold and during the course of the exhibition’s run will change to pearl pink, blush, and then pearl lemon—an allusion to the landscapes Kil encountered during her travels through the Southwest. In addition, while previous balloon sculptures used milled aluminum discs as a tether, Sunday employs thin copper sheets, which resonate much like cymbals as they move across the floor. According to the artist, the sound is meant to mimic that of thunder or a storm off in the distance. And just like the calm before the storm, the title Sunday references the calm before Monday and the storm that is the workweek. Taken as a whole, the exhibition presents the contrast between the experience of nature (wild and intimidating) and its domesticated other (tame and comfortable). Autobiographical and obtuse, Sweaty Sun expands on the artist’s practice of employing the exhibition as a narrative platform. Here, Kil’s impression of the Southwest—its intimidating expansiveness—is abstracted and presented for viewers to experience vicariously. This feeling is tempered by Kil’s hallmark balloon sculptures, which both respond to and rely upon the viewer’s presence. While loosely based on the artist’s travels, the exhibition is purposefully left open for interpretation, allowing for a multitude of readings and associations. Part object, part performance, part familiar, part foreign, it is this mutable dimension of Kil’s work that is so compelling and confounding.
Gabriel Ritter The Nancy and Tim Hanley Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art Dallas Museum of Art
Notes 1. Artist statement, October 2014. 2. Artist statement, July 2014. 3. Piero Manzoni, quoted in Piero Manzoni: When Bodies Became Art, ed. Martin Engler (Bielefeld, Germany: Kerber, 2013), 170.
Exhibition Checklist Hard Shoulder, 2015 Leather, toy stuffing, and thread 80 ¾ x 4 ¾ in. (205 x 12 cm) Kiss Kiss, 2015 Life-size Bulldog, leather collar, and fabric Dimensions variable Kiss Kiss, 2015 Life-size Labrador Retriever puppy, faux fur coat, and postcard Dimensions variable Kiss Kiss, 2015 Life-size Dachshund, suede jacket, leather, and wooden frame Dimensions variable Pop, 2015 MDF and paint Dimensions variable Sunday, 2015 Latex balloons, Hi-Float, helium, elastic cord, copper sheets, and coins Dimensions variable All works courtesy of the artist and AOYAMA | MEGURO, Tokyo; Gallery Opdahl, Stavanger; ONE AND J. Gallery, Seoul All works © Chosil Kil
Concentrations 58: Chosil Kil is organized by the Dallas Museum of Art. The presentation is made possible by TWO X TWO for AIDS and Art, an annual fundraising event that jointly benefits amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research and the Dallas Museum of Art, and by the Contemporary Art Initiative through the gifts of Nancy and Clint Carlson, Lindsey and Patrick Collins, Arlene and John Dayton, Claire Dewar, Jennifer and John Eagle, Amy and Vernon Faulconer, Kenny Goss and Joyce Goss, Tim Hanley, Julie and Ed Hawes, Marguerite Steed Hoffman, The Karpidas Foundation, Patty Lowdon, Cynthia and Forrest Miller, Janelle and Alden Pinnell, Allen and Kelli Questrom, Cindy and Howard Rachofsky, Lisa and John Rocchio, Catherine and Will Rose, Deedie and Rusty Rose, Jan and Jim Showers, Jackie and Peter Stewart, Gayle and Paul Stoffel, and Sharon and Michael Young. The Dallas Museum of Art is supported, in part, by the generosity of DMA Partners and donors, the citizens of Dallas through the City of Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs, and the Texas Commission on the Arts.