I Meet With Stone: Soon-im Kim

2008 Alternative Space Noon Sponsored Exhibition for Rising Artists

Incheon Foundation for Arts & Culture Sponsored Exhibition

Tuesday, February 26 – Thursday, March 6, 2008

Alternative Space Noon, Suwon, Korea

Open Reception: Tuesday, February 26, 2008 5p.m.

Saturday, April 5 – Thursday, April 17, 2008

Space Beam, Incheon, Korea

Open Reception: Saturday, April 5, 2008 5p.m.

Exhibition Overview

Each stone resembles the place it has been¹. In winter, 2002, seeing several stones lying haphazardly on my desk, I discovered myself recalling the place and the time I had picked up those stones. My project² started on that day.

The project² is to record stones I have been meeting during my travel, started in January 2003 in Anyang. At first, when I met a stone on the road, I took pictures where the stone lay, put the stone in the bag and delivered it to the gallery. Then I exhibited all those stones with pictures to show where they are from. However, the routine has changed since one day when I started to take pictures of scenes from the stone’s view, by putting down the camera in the spot the stone was laying. The new recording method makes it possible to see what those stones, moved by the artist to the gallery, had been seeing in their journey. At the same time, the audience can experience the low viewpoint of the stones, which rolled along the roads. If an audience encounters a stone, from the place she know or related to her, she will suddenly start having affection for this ugly and unfamiliar stone by thinking ‘I have been there too, I also have taken pictures there, It is where I grew up, Oh the stone I could not see there ended up here..’ This feeling may come from realizing that we are not different from these stones on the roads. 

Stones resembling their home¹ roll along the roads without being noticed and meet the artist. The meetings are remembered and generate new values by being shared through the medium of ‘recording.’ The essence, which makes these stones more special and have the artist share its specialty with people, is ‘memory.’³ Our existence becomes special when someone remembers someone else and remembered by someone else.    

Production Period: January, 2003 – February, 2008