Atta Kim

Atta Kim (born 1956) is a South Korean photographer who has been active since the mid-1980s. He has exhibited his work internationally and was the first photographer chosen to represent South Korea in the São Paulo Biennial.

His early works were black and white portraits of subjects including psychiatric patients, individuals designated as "cultural assets" by the Korean government, and his own family. His later and most notable series of works have been exhibited as full color, large scale prints: The Museum Project, which depicts people "preserved" within Plexiglas cases placed in various settings, and ON-AIR, which uses long exposures and image compositing to make individual people and objects dissolve. Kim's work has been heavily influenced by Zen Buddhist concepts of interconnectedness and transience, and he commonly uses Buddhist iconography.

Biography

Kim was born on Geoje Island, one of the southern-most islands in South Korea, and completed elementary school there before continuing his education in Busan.[1] He studied mechanical engineering at Changwon University and earned a Bachelor of Science degree. His application had been submitted on his behalf by a friend, who had also chosen his major for him because it offered a good prospect for a job after graduation.[1]

Kim’s decision to become an artist caused conflict with his father, a schoolteacher who wanted Kim to become a college professor.[2] Kim began experimenting with photography in junior high school, though he never studied it academically.[2] His work during college was mostly abstract; dissatisfied with the results, he decided to explore the outside world and to photograph people from various backgrounds and stages of life.[2] His first exhibited series was "Psychopath" in 1987, which were portraits of mentally ill patients.[2]

His later participation in a group show gained him enough recognition that he was named Korea’s representative to the twenty-fifth São Paulo Biennial in 2002, becoming the first photographer to represent Korea in that venue.[3] Kim entered The Museum Project, which became his first work to be widely exhibited outside of Korea.[4]

ON-AIR, his first solo exhibition in the United States, was shown in 2006 at the International Center of Photography in New York City to positive critical reviews.[5] In contrast to his attempt at capturing permanence in The Museum Project, Kim now focused on transience in ON-AIR, with large-scale images created through very long or multiple exposures.

As of 2009, Kim lives and works in New York and Seoul.

Work

Kim has described his photographs as merely "byproducts" of his attempt at a personal philosophy.[5] He cites inspiration from the concept of interconnectedness in Zen Buddhism, the focus on temporal existence in the writings of German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), and the teachings of the Russian-Armenian mystic G. I. Gurdjieff (1872–1949) on transcendence.[6] Kim is careful to explain that he is not a practicing Buddhist, despite the prevalence of Buddhist iconography and concepts in his work.[7]

Kim’s work is in the permanent collections of the following institutions:[8]

Early work

Kim’s Psychopath series (1985–86) consisted of black and white portraits taken of patients in a Korean psychiatric hospital, that were shot during long, interactive sessions.[9] His interest in the patients was inspired by his reading of Sigmund Freud, and he intended to use his photography to reveal their consciousness; however, Kim ultimately concluded that the images "revealed nothing more...than the insanity of the patients."[10] Kim claims to have burned all 1,200 copies of the published collection, after the wife of a patron had to be hospitalized for a relapse of depression after seeing the book.[10]

Kim began his next series, Father (1986–90), after he reunited with his father following the success of Psychopaths. He didn’t consider the series, which depicted "the continuity of time" from generation to generation within his family, to be a significant artistic achievement, but thought it helped him "return...to [his] roots" and become "mentally independent."[11]

Human Cultural Assets (1989–90) is a series of black and white portraits of people designated "national cultural assets" by the Korean government. He met 150 individuals that had been so designated, which included elderly dancers, musicians, and monks, and spent between one and seven days with each trying to learn their personal philosophies.[12] The series was not exhibited until 2002.

Kim's In-der-Welt-sein (1990–91) consists of black and white images of natural objects near a Buddhist temple, which are revealed only by a dim light.[13] Kim made the images with exposure times of one to two hours, taken between 3:00 am and 5:00 am, which are the hours known as the time of the Buddha’s enlightenment.[14] The name of the series (German for "Being in the world") is a concept of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger intended to eliminate the distinction between subject and object. Kim recounts that when his father would walk him home from school as a child, he would point out small details such as flowers, insects, or stones. These observances taught him that all things were of equal significance to his own existence.[15]

Deconstruction

Deconstruction (1991–95) consisted of black and white photographs of groups of nude men and women positioned lifelessly in desolate landscapes.[16] These were described as "cinematic performance-based pictures."[17] The subjects’ faces are rarely visible, instead obscured by hair or by turning away from the camera so that they do not read as individuals. In a few images, however, the nudes are standing. Kim did not yet work with assistants, and so personally scouted the locations, located the models, and moved the equipment.[3]

Kim noted that the series "created quite a shock" because the critics were unable to accept it.[3] Though "the bodies were meant to signify dominant new life," the images were also perceived as "look[ing] like the aftermath of a catastrophe."[18] Others wrote that his use of the body as an object reflected "the sense of the sacred being present in all things, whether animate or inanimate, and of all things comprising the sacred."[19]

The Museum Project

The Museum Project (2005). On the cover is Museum Project #149, from the series "Nirvana." A nude figure is suspended between acrylic sheets before a wall of paraffin Buddha figures.

Kim continued his placement of nude figures in unusual contexts in The Museum Project (1995–2002), his first color series. Each subseries within The Museum Project depicted people, either singly or in groups, formally posed on display within clear Plexiglas cases as if they were museum artifacts. Kim's "core concept" in The Museum Project "is that every single being in the universe has its own worth;" the series then functions as Kim's "private museum" to preserve these people as "contemporary treasures."[20] The series also explores "basic functions of the museum such as preserving, collecting, and categorizing."[21] The New York Times described the series as transforming human bodies into "untouchably inorganic" objects like "antique sculptures in a gallery or expensive machines in a showroom;" its critic found the series "effective: quiet, minimalist, mildly surreal."[18]

The Museum Project consists of nine subseries:

ON-AIR Project

Kim began ON-AIR Project (2002–present) when he pondered that the subjects in his "private museum" in The Museum Project would not exist forever. The central concept of ON-AIR Project is accordingly the impermanence of all beings in the universe.[4] The “ON-AIR Project” consists of three different procedures: first, long exposure technique is procedure which can make an object disappear in proportion to the speed; second procedure is creating new images by superimpose several images. Lastly, a procedure can be executed with journey to find meaning of existence which can be represented by ice melting process. Using extended exposure time from 8 hours to 25 hours per cut, Kim makes moving people and objects disappear, which achieves both a visual effect as well as an expression of "the precious value of individuals and of history."[32] Another grouping was formed from combining images so that an accretion of individuals becomes a composite.

ON-AIR Project was largely praised for its philosophical richness as well as its striking, technically proficient visuals.[33] The long exposure shots were characterized as a "radically different" imagining of duration.[34] However, less effective were the composites in which the superimposition is conspicuous.[35]

Like The Museum Project, ON-AIR Project consists of several subseries:

1- New York: Street and pedestrian traffic dissolves in a mist over the long exposures, in photos taken in iconic, and typically crowded locations in New York City’s Midtown Manhattan: Times Square, Grand Central Station, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Park Avenue, and Fifth Avenue.[39]

2- China: The city of Beijing and Shanghai: Tiananmen Square, Chang'an Avenue, Nanjing Road

3- India: The city of Mumbai and Delhi: Karol Bagh, Chandni Chowk, Victoria Station

4- Berlin: Berlin Wall, Bahnhof Wittenberg Platz, Brandenburg Gate

5- Prague: Narodni, Old Town Square, Marlostranske Namesti, Wenceslas Square

6- Paris: Champs-Élysées, Place de la Concorde, Pont Alexandre III, Pont Neuf

Exhibitions

Solo shows

Group shows

Catalogs and monographs

Notes

  1. 1 2 Kim 2006, p. 11.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Kim 2006, pp. 11–12.
  3. 1 2 3 Kim 2006, p. 15.
  4. 1 2 Kim 2006, p. 18.
  5. 1 2 Kim 2006, p. 9.
  6. ↑ Kim 2006, pp. 9–11.
  7. ↑ Kim 2006, pp. 9–11; Cotter 2006.
  8. ↑ Yossi Milo Gallery, bio of Atta Kim. Accessed January 30, 2007.
  9. ↑ Cotter 2006; see Kim 2006, p. 18 for an image from the series.
  10. 1 2 Kim 2006, p. 12.
  11. ↑ Kim 2006, p. 13.
  12. ↑ Kim 2005, p. 91; Kim 2006, pp. 13–14.
  13. ↑ See examples at Kim 2005, p. 91; Kim 2006, pp. 13–14.
  14. ↑ Kim 2006, pp. 13–14.
  15. ↑ Kim 2005, pp. 90–91.
  16. ↑ Kim 2006, p. 15; see also pp. 25-39 for images from the series.
  17. ↑ Cotter 2006
  18. 1 2 Cotter 2006.
  19. ↑ Yu Yeon Kim, writing in Kim 2006, p. 90.
  20. ↑ Kim 2005, pp. 9, 18.
  21. 1 2 3 Grosz 2006.
  22. ↑ See Museum Project #001, Museum Project #030, and Kim 2005, pp. 5–19 for images from the "Field" series.
  23. ↑ See Museum Project #28, Kim 2005, pp. 57–63.
  24. ↑ See Museum Project #071, Museum Project #073; Kim 2005, pp. 20–30, 36–37.
  25. ↑ See Museum Project #050; Kim 2005, pp. 32–35; the quote comes from Kim 2005, p. 93.
  26. ↑ See Museum Project #076; Kim 2005, pp. 44–48.
  27. ↑ See Museum Project #087; Kim 2005, pp. 38–43.
  28. ↑ Kim 2005, pp. 51–54.
  29. ↑ See Kim 2006, pp. 17–18, for description; Kim 2005, pp. 66–87, for images.
  30. ↑ Kim 2005, pp. 64–65.
  31. ↑ Kim 2005, p. 93.
  32. ↑ Pasulka 2006.
  33. ↑ Rice wrote for Aperture that the ICP show had "a formal and technical virtuosity that works to underscore its metaphysical concepts. [...] Kim’s beautiful color photographs merge the two, so the works’ very physicality carries more poignantly the message of the inevitable obliteration of all things." Rice 2007. Holland Cotter of the New York Times called "the philosophical shape" of Kim’s work "novel." Cotter 2006. David Grosz, New York Sun critic, called the series on the whole "visually spectacular and conceptually rich." Grosz 2006.
  34. ↑ Artdaily.org 2006.
  35. ↑ Grosz called these "the weakest works in the show," and "gimmicky." Grosz 2006.
  36. ↑ See DMZ Series #023-2 (2004) and DMZ Series #088-2 (2005) for examples.
  37. ↑ Kim 2006, p. 19.
  38. ↑ Monologue of Ice Series #116-2 (2005).
  39. ↑ See New York Series #110-1 (2005), New York Series #110-2 (2005), New York Series #110-7 (2005); Kim 2006, pp. 71–75.

References

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