Bumin Kim
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About the Artist
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Originally from South Korea, Bumin Kim received her MFA in Drawing and Painting in 2015 from the University of North Texas, Denton, Texas. In 2017 she was awarded at the 30th annual international competition and exhibition, Materials: Hard+Soft. Her work has been shown by various institutions, including: Pulse Art Fair in Miami, FL; Dallas Art Fair in Dallas, TX; Art Aspen in Aspen, CO; and Texas Contemporary Art Fair in Houston, TX. Furthermore, Kim’s work has been featured in publications, such as: New American Paintings, Fresh Paint Magazine, and Glasstire, and can be found in public and private collections throughout the United States and Europe. In 2020, Bumin Kim completed an artist residency at Facebook’s headquarters in Austin, Texas
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Artist Statement
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This body of work is a showcase of questions; an approach towards the idea of painting and drawing in the expanded field. Kim explores the nature of line, and the potential held therein, to push the boundaries between the two-dimensional surface and three-dimensional space. Thread and string are synonymous with the actions of weaving and stitching, both for utilitarian purposes, and to serve as metaphor, for the joining of two separate entities with efforts to repair what once was, or with the intent of becoming something other, whole and new.
The transformative power of materiality is at play in these works, and Kim has repurposed the context of thread and string, to emphasize the energy, delicacy, and grace of painting and drawing. Both the weight of line as thin and singular, and the collection of lines en masse as solid form, are sensitive tools found in Kim's repertoire; these are tools which have been exercised with skillful intent to build interesting forms, reminiscent of exacerbated versions of value studies, gesture drawings, or economical sketches one might find in the foundations of drawing. But that would be too reductive to let them exist still tethered to such a basic, albeit important set of concepts. These works shift, undulate, and pulse into our space, promulgating themselves as entities emancipated from the confines of flatland, and now poised, vibrating, just above the surface. Drawing has been personified, and is no longer limited to the index of the hand, or the illusion of the flat surface. It is an echo of a once sorrowful song, who’s voice is present, tender, and alive. |
