New Romance: Art and the Posthuman: Museum of Contemporary Art Australia

Kibong Rhee’s artworks question the structure and flow of human life, nature, and objects in the world. According to the artist “everything is in a state of constant evolution and disappearance” a process he compares to water’s transformation through states of liquid, solid, and gas. Rhee believes that “water embodies life’s fleetingness, existing somewhere between the spiritual and physical worlds”. 

Perpetual Snow (2015) is a kinetic sculpture that intertwines the human act of writing and the environmental phenomenon of falling snow. It consists of a thin metal apparatus that moves a life-size silicone arm (modeled on the arm of the artist) holding a white marker pen in programmed sequences across the length and breadth of two glass panels. The timing of the viewing experience is significant, as over the course of the exhibition the arm slowly covers the glass in white ink, becoming increasingly obscured until it is rendered almost invisible behind by a field of thickening ‘snow’.