Présentation de l'artiste

Kim Kyumin

Photographer Kyumin Kim is a freelance photographer based in South Korea. The artist travels to various locations across the country, continuing a practice that relies on chance. Their work focuses on the distortions and ambiguities that emerge when a captured subject comes into contact with the camera and is transformed into an image. Through this process, they envision forms, but when these imaginings fail, slip away, and condense into unforeseen images, they seek meaning precisely at that point of collapse. Last year, Kim participated in the group exhibition ‘Small but Smaller’ (FLOOR, 2024) alongside artists who explore unique perspectives and narratives through specific scales.

Artist statement

‘Peeling Shell’ (2021-2024)

After a daily routine that demands absolute clarity, an escape into the unfamiliarity of nature offers a brief pause–a moment when the restless gaze finally comes to rest. Within the boundaries of nature, each scene, encased in its own unfathomable shell, created a sense of separation between me and the scene. There, I carried on my work, contemplating shapes I had encountered superficially before, yet had never truly seen. As they come into contact with black-and-white film and the inner workings of the camera, those scenes take on a new form, becoming images imbued with distortion. Now transformed into images, those scenes invite me to imagine some hidden brilliance, something that lies somewhere just beyond the firm shell of objects, where presence and absence intertwine. Though my imagination, leaning on images, often fails me, I still hold on to the fragments that emerge in that moment. These works refer to things that, much like my dreams from last night, though vivid at first, will soon fade and slip away, fleeting faces that never truly take shape at all.