KIM Soun-Gui

KIM Soun-Gui was born in 1946 in Buyeo, Korea. She graduated from the Department of Painting at Seoul National University. Interested in the deconstruction of painting since her college days, in 1971 she was invited by the Centre Artistique de Rencontre International in Nice to come and work in France. Ever since her employment at École Supérieuredes Beaux-Arts de Marseille in 1974, she has lived in that country, actively carrying out her art projects. Located in southern France, where free intellectual debate was actively taking place from the time of the 1968 Protests, KIM worked together with experimental artist groups such as Supports/Surfaces. She presented works combining philosophy, art and technology, including Situation Plastique(1971-75), and other large-scale performances and video works, in public venues. In Korea, her works came as a refreshing surprise, as her experimental performances and conceptual art were introduced at the Soungui Kim Art Festival in 1975, at the U.S. Culture Center in Seoul, and the festival commemorating publication of issue No. 100 of Space magazine, held at Myeongdong Art Theater.

In 1982 KIM went backpacking to various countries of the world, exploring the culture and arts of the East and the West. While in New York, she associated with video artists such as Nam June PAIK, Ko NAKAJIMA, Ira SCHNEIDER and Frank GILLETTE. With her deepening interest in video and multimedia, she organized Video & Multimedia: KIM Soun-Gui and her invitees (1986), with the participation of Nam June PAIK, John CAGE and others, and presented multimedia works combining objet and video, such as Tatata and Vide&0. From the late 1980s she dealt with issues related to the spread of global capitalism and structural changes in society due to the Internet, through her works such as O-time and Voie-VoixLactée (Milky way). She produced Stock Exchange, which took a critical viewpoint of civilization in which the value of capital takes priority over all other values, and highlighted the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and carried out interviews with world-renowned aestheticians including Jacques DERRIDA and Jean-Luc NANCY, to discuss the values and roles of art in the neoliberal era.

Though capitalist society criticizes laziness as a sign of insincerity and indolence, KIM lived a life like clouds, which transform freely and drift along making their own paths in the sky, artist KIM Soun-Gui lives a life that is not confined to formalities, but pioneers new roads of art ahead of her times, creating new paths in untrodden land. KIM Soun-Gui has constantly blazed trails in new territories and has been introduced to the public as a case of convergence between disciplines and genres including those involving science and technology, and the arts. From the deconstruction of painting, to spectator-participatory events in public places, challenges in video and multimedia, and comparative studies in culture and philosophy of East and West, KIM Soun-Gui's artistic journey has always been one step ahead.*

While working as artist in France, she has taught at École Nationale d'Art Décoratif de Nice, the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Marseille, and the École Nationale Supérieure d'Art de Dijon. Her works have been presented in GwangjuBiennale, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Korea, Artsonje Center, the Austrian Museum of Modern Art, Ars Aevi - a Museum of Contemporary Art in Bosnia, Centre Pompidou, Fondation Cartier, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nice, and the San Diego Museum of Art in California.

*Text Reference: Soungui Kim: Lazy Clouds, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, 2019