To the Last Generation, Kim Yong-Ik highlights the aesthetics, attitudes, thoughts, and practices of Kim Yong-Ik (1947–), whose multilayered work spans conceptual, modernist, and public art. The exhibition focuses on the artist's later works, which contain ecological concepts and messages about civilization, the environment, and life that he has been unfolding since the 2000s. It also examines the major artistic philosophies explored by Kim as he generated these works. Since the very beginning of his career, Kim has been engaged with the art and society of his time. He has challenged the authority of both the artist and art and cast a critical eye on official institutions and accepted society through the concept of art as self-reflection, editing, and dialogue. In this process, Kim’s work has gradually expanded beyond the exploration of art to the level of society and even all humanity, conveying messages that are close to our lives.
The Kim Yong-Ik Archive, which is comprised of materials that he produced and collected throughout his life, is a multilateral space that shows the development of his thoughts. It demonstrates the formation of the ideas underlying his works rather than the process of their creation, and in a sense his archival pieces function as independent stand-alone works. Like his writing, which he has been pursuing for more than fifty years, documentation has become a way of life for him, demonstrating how his art is a product of continuous interaction with the art and society of his time.
The exhibition uses his archive to trace the evolution of the ideas underlying the artist’s works, from his early epistemological aesthetics to his later ontological philosophy. Kim Yong-Ik’s art-making has evolved from early works exploring visual perception, conceptualism, and modernist theories through art to his later works exploring the ontological aspects of art, humans, and civilization. Over this process, the artist has integrated art-making into his way of life and philosophy. The title of the exhibition, To the Last Generation, is a metaphor for this journey in his life and work. He has been engaging in dialogue with less-accepted ideas, tabooed behaviors, and marginalized people considered taboo by society as he sought new possibilities in them. It is hoped that Kim Yong-Ik’s journey will contribute to helping us think about alternatives for our lives and society in this twenty-first century as we face a pandemic and the climate crisis.
Photo: Kim Yong-Ik Monologue: In Search of a Shadow, 2023 (still) ⓒ Taehoon Kwon
