Sung Hwan Kim:
Pieces from 'In the Room'
29 May - 5 July 2009
Main Galleries
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I thought of a room as a box, from which a story vibrates, and I began to think about the constant occupants of rooms. 'In the Room' series focused on captives (the tortured), an actress on stand-by for her secret lover, a dog, a radio host, a traveller in a city and so forth as the room occupants (and vibrators of the hidden boxes). I knew that male humpback whales of one population in a breeding season sing the same song, but each time this song is sung, it varies through imitation and improvisation. I thought of both performances and stories within those performances as versions of variations. Plain phenomena are not more exciting than they are, but they are often told otherwise through exaggeration, deletion, intonation, and rhythm, texture of voice, and usage of time, as fairy tales, myths, magic, lies, propaganda, history, or sometimes, fact. 'Summer Days in Keijo', 'Dog video', and 'From the Commanding Heights...' spun off from this series. Most of the songs from the 'In the Room' Series will be published separately as dogr's album, 'In Korean Wilds and Villages'. In this form, I recognize that the authorship of these stories is conferred to another medium, another language, another culture, and another man.
Wilkinson Gallery is pleased to present the second show in London of New York based Korean artist Sung Hwan Kim. Having previously shown From the Commanding Heights... at Wilkinson in November 2007, this exhibition Pieces From In the Room brings together further elements from the series. Recently shown in different scales and variations at his solo exhibitions at Witte de With, Rotterdam and Gallery TPW, Canada, the works in In the Room have been developed in parallel to live performances and concerts in collaboration with dogr (aka David Michael DiGregorio), who often assumes the role of the narrator of the series.
Downstairs the gallery stages an intricate installation version of Dog Video, comprising of sculpture and drawing to create an immersive environment. Dog Video was part of the performance, In the Room 3, first performed at STEIM, Amsterdam in 2006. One of the new elements in this exhibition is the documentation of the performance, Pushing Against the Air, 2007, first performed at De Appel, Amsterdam and Project Art Centre, Dublin. The Drawing Video installation includes a video extracted from a live performance of Pushing Against the Air. Upstairs Kim shows Summer Days in Keijo (2007), which was one of the highlights of the 5th Berlin Biennale 2008.
dogr's album In Korean Wilds and Villages consists of many of the songs developed in Kim's performances and videos. Released through Sonig Records the CD can be purchased from the gallery priced £15.
Sung Hwan Kim will be exhibiting a collaborative project with Joan Jonas at Art Basel 40, Art Premiere, Basel, where on the 10 June 2009, 1 - 1.30pm, Kim will be in conversation with Jonas to launch the publication of Sung Hwan Kim's new book published by Witte de With, Rotterdam. For 2010 Kim is working towards a four person show at Haus der Kunst, Munich with Steven Claydon, Diango Hernandez and Mai-Thu Perret, a solo exhibition at Tranzit Gallery, Prague and a new performance work to be presented at the New Museum, New York.
Artworks That Ideas Can Buy
A project by Cesare Pietroiusti
29 May - 5 July 2009
Project Space
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Artworks (for sale in exchange for visitors ideas) by
Maria Thereza Alves, Dara Birnbaum, Tania Bruguera, Adam Chodzko, Jeremy Deller, Jimmie Durham, Lara Favaretto, Joan Jonas, Lia Perjovski and Dan Perjovski
Wilkinson Gallery is pleased to present a project Space exhibition by Cesare Pietroiusti. For Wilkinson Pietroiusti will exhibit ten artworks by international artists of different generations and poetics, using different media from drawing to video to photography to performative practices. The artworks exhibited in the show are for sale, but the currency that can 'buy' them is not money, but ideas - visitors' ideas. Visitors are invited to leave comments, opinions, proposals, suggestions etc. that relate to any of the artworks in the show. Similarly to a silent auction, these ideas will be left in sealed envelopes in the space.
Visitors are also invited to email their ideas to . At the end of the show all the envelopes will be opened and the visitors' ideas made public; anonymity can be assured if requested. The artists (i.e. the authors of the artworks in the show) including Joan Jonas, Dara Birnbaum, Lara Favaretto and Jeremy Deller, will then decide if any of the visitors' proposed ideas equate to the value of their exhibited artwork, and if so, the visitor/author of the idea will receive the artwork in exchange for their idea, without paying any money.
The work of conceptual artist Cesare Pietroiusti questions the very worth of art in society. His works propose to interweave and condense networks of relationships. This process in which the persistence of an authentic resistance to the logics of the gallery/museum system is easily individuated, has led him to reflect on the theme of communication and to support opportunities for a bi-univocal "artistic communication," the only sort capable of expressing highly subjective contents, in opposition to the univocal nature of "authorial communication."
One of the founders of the Centro Studi Jartrakor (Rome) and of the "Journal of the Psychology of Art", Pietroiusti is best known for his 1997 pamphlet 'Non-Functional Thoughts', containing approximately one hundred useless, parasite or incongruous ideas to be realised as art projects by anyone. Some of these ideas have been executed by artists and curators, such as for the exhibition "Democracy!" (Royal College of Art, London, 2000) His project "Things That Are Certainly not Art", for which about 500 people contributed to the show, inaugurated the Bloomberg Space in London in 2002.
In 2007 Pietroiusti held a series of performances "Paradoxical Economies", at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, and participated in Performa 07, New York, and founded, together with the collective "Space" (Bratislava), "Evolution de l'Art" (www.evolutiondelart.net), the first contemporary art gallery to deal solely with immaterial artworks.
In 2003 he took part in the 50th Venice Biennale with "Riserva Artificiale", a collective work with a group of students of the local Academy of Fine Arts, consisting in narrative explorations of people and places of Porto Marghera, the industrial area of Venice. He has also shown at Serpentine Gallery in London in 1992 and at the Louisiana Museum in Humlebæk in 1996.