“Burnt Classroom II” (2007) is part of his solo exhibition “Geometric Lyricism” (2008). He built a black building frame and linked its pillars with red threads to stage a building in flames. His attempt to give hard geometrical forms a lyrical narrative started with his solo exhibition “Little Deer Island-Sorokdo” (2005). Inspired by the leper colony Sorok Island under the Japanese Rule, Kim reduces the brick buildings built by the patients into geometric forms. As seen in the exhibition, Kim adds narrative to seemingly dry, dull geometrical forms, transcending simple experiments with media or formats. He invites viewers into a space that expands their participation and experiences to the maximum extent by visualizing, in a non-expository manner, a social issue, or a special story and the circumstances of a place where he traveled.
Kim Tae Gon (b.1968) received his bachelors’ and master’s degrees from Seoul National University’s Sculpture Department, and obtained his master’s degree from Chelsea College of Arts, University of the Arts London, U.K. His solo exhibitions include “Islam Dance, Prison of Light” at Moran Museum of Art in 2001; “Meditate Space” at Kookmin Art Gallery in 2003; “Little Deer Island-Sorokdo” at Art Park in 2005; “Kim Tae Gon Solo Exhibition” at Gallery MIZ in 2007; and “Geometric Lyricism” at Gallery SUN Contemporary in 2008. He has participated in group exhibitions including “Pairs” at Marronnier Art Center in 2005; “Redefining Old Architectural Ceramics” at Clayarch Gimhae Museum in 2008; and “Your Mind’s Eye: Digital Spectrum” at Seoul Museum of Art, SeMA in 2008. He is the recipient of the Grand Prize of the 2nd Moran Sculpture Exhibition in 1999; and the 2007 Kim Se-choong Young Sculptor Award. He currently serves on the faculty at Kookmin University’s College of Art.
In his artistic career, Kim Tae Gon has explored various mediums, including sculpture, installation, photography and others. Prior to his study in the United Kingdom, he had mostly turned to conventional materials like wood and rocks to create contemplative works on the positive forms and negative space, or vice versa. He sculpted figures we may have come across in our daily lives, a plant, or an animal, or carved out material to create such similar shapes. In this way, he repeated or reversed similar figures, continuously exploring the basic language of sculpture. During his stay in the U.K., he was engrossed in installation and photography, and since the mid-1990s, he has mainly used thread and light to create his space-oriented works. While the viewer tends to build a passive relation with a sculpture in the conventional sense, Kim’s work allows for a more active engagement and a phenomenological experience by letting the audience walk through the space, constructed by him, which is made up of the lines repeatedly intersected like the woof and warp threads. His work is not an objectified object, but a kind of environment created by light, which is not a material, and the viewer can experience an expansion of the senses, impossible to encounter in their daily lives, in this geometrical space.
