Gimhongsok: A Suit with Underwear on the Outside and a Dress with the Skirt Worn as a Hat: Space ISU

Gimhongsok: A Suit with Underwear on the Outside and a Dress with the Skirt Worn as a Hat

August 23 - November 10, 2023

Space ISU

Space ISU, the cultural art space of ISU Group, presents the artist Gimhongsok’s solo exhibition, A Suit with Underwear on the Outside and a Dress with the Skirt Worn as a Hat. The exhibition runs from August 23 to November 10. Presenting artworks that reverse accustomed concepts and forms of art with a variety of media and formats, this exhibition intends to have the audience rethink what art is and to stimulate the audience’s imagination and a new way of thinking. This exhibition consists of the artist’s earlier unreleased works as well as new works. These works are a continuation of Gim’s previous works that explore and rearrange the hierarchical and dichotomous confrontation structures of the “inside” institutional systems from the “outside” and expand to the concept of “entanglement.” Through this exhibition, while reflecting the complex diversity of society, the artist shows an aspect of today’s art which is entangled with the art of the senses, the art of thought, modernity, contemporaneity, and with aesthetic sense. A variety of media works—including hyper-realistic figure sculptures, abstract sculptures, sound installation, texts, and paintings—are presented. This exhibition intends to be newly reconstructed as an entangled “piece of work” and hopes to present the process of “becoming” rather than the idea of merely staying in its state of “being.”

Gimhongsok (1964–), born in Seoul, Korea, graduated from the Department of Sculpture, Seoul National University and studied at the Kunstakademie, Düsseldorf, Germany in the 1990s. He is known as a conceptual artist who materializes social, political, and cultural issues in Korea following the introduction of Western modernity through translation and appropriation, and presents them directly or indirectly through media such as video, performance, and installation. His works are often indirectly critical and playful, examining hierarchy and the ethics of labor in art. His major exhibitions were held at home and aboard: Asia Culture Center, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA), PLATEAU–Samsung Museum of Art, Buk-Seoul Museum of Art, and Art Sonje Center in Korea and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Guggenheim Museum in NYC, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and Walker Art Center.