The octogenarian sculptor Kim Yun-shin, one of Korea’s few postwar female artists, will be jointly represented by two leading galleries, Lehmann Maupin and Kukje Gallery. This marks Kim’s first time collaborating with a mega-commercial dealer in her six-decade career, which has resulted in more fame abroad than at home.The announcement comes on the heels of the 88-year-old’s inaugural retrospective sportstotozonecom in Korea, hosted at the Nam-Seoul Museum of Art last year. Titled “Towards Oneness,” the survey highlighted the artist’s decades-long journey in creating an organic visual language through the labor-intensive shaping of hardwood and stone.The Seoul event brought belated attention to the creative who had been “missing” from Korea’s art scene since relocating to Argentina in 1984 in search of the ideal material.
“The decision to work in Argentina for the past 40 years was driven by my own determination. And my visit to Korea in 2022 was (originally) planned as the final visit to my homeland, considering I will turn 90 in the near future,” she said in a statement, adding that 2023 became an unexpected yet significant turning point in her career.“With my remaining strength, I will return everyone’s support by devoting my time to creating work that I hope will inspire many.” “With steadfast dedication and a bold spirit of experimentation for new materials, Kim cultivated her practice in Argentina throughout an era when it was nearly impossible for a woman to work as a full-time sculptor,” noted Lee Hyun-sook, chairperson of Kukje Gallery. “Amid the current surge in art employing media, digital technology and the virtual world, Kim’s longstanding commitment to the traditional sculptural process, grounded in a profound understanding of materiality, is all the more special.”Born during Japanese colonial rule in 1935 in Wonsan, Gangwon Province, in present-day North Korea, the sculptor crossed the border to the South following the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950.
She received her BFA from Hongik University, becoming one of the first women to formally train as a sculptor in the country. She then went on to further study sculpture and lithography at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1964. Upon her return five years later, Kim co-founded the Korea Sculptress Association. A decade later, the artist traveled to Argentina and became instantly mesmerized by the wilderness and the robust wood of the region, eventually finding her second home in Buenos Aires. In 2008, she opened the Museo Kim Yun Shin in the city — the first and only museum established by a Korean Argentine.Since the late 1970s, Kim has characterized her body of sculptures under the title, “Add Two Add One, Divide Two Divide One.”“The terms ‘add’ and ‘divide’ originate from the Eastern philosophical concepts of yin (division and fragmentation) and yang (addition and integration),” Lehmann Maupin said in a statement. “(As) she ‘adds’ her soul to the wood and ‘divides’ the space between bark and inner wood to create a complete whole, the artist transforms the solid, rough masses of wood into soft, organic shapes.”In recent years, Kim has expanded her practice to two-dimensional mediums such as painting and printmaking.In March, the artist will have her first solo exhibitions with the two galleries — at Kukje Gallery’s Seoul outpost and Lehmann Maupin’s In Focus presentation in 스포츠토토존 New York.