It’s tool time indeed at the Cleveland Museum of Art where contemporary Korean Artist Kim Beom will be presenting his first solo museum exhibition in the United States. Featuring mixed-media installations and a collection of 17 drawings, “Objects Being Taught They Are Nothing But Tools” opens Sun 11/14 and runs through Sun 3/6/11 at the prestigious Cleveland institution.
In a nutshell, Beom relies on deadpan humor, absurdist enunciation, poetry and childlike imagery to investigate our perception of the world. Furthermore, the artist challenges the viewer through the visual tradition of illusionism to become actively engaged in the projection of images and thoughts on everyday utensils. What may sound esoteric or, gasp, deeply abstract is nothing more than Beom provoking the illusion that the objects are animated with human traits. Cool Cleveland talked to Cleveland Museum of Art Contemporary Arts Curator Paola Morsiani about this unique exhibit, which stems from the idiom “don’t judge a book by its cover.”
Cool Cleveland: First off, why was the Cleveland Museum of Art interested in presenting Beom’s work?
Paola Morsiani: Beom is in his late 40s – he’s sort of a mature artist, a mid-career artist – and his work is not as flashy as his colleagues in Korea. A lot of Korean artists who have had commercial and museum successes before him make work that is very colorful and oftentimes references design. Beom makes work that comes across as more traditional. In fact, he makes work that explores other dynamics. It doesn’t matter how it’s made. It references painting, sculpture, drawing, but also references the dynamics of viewership. What is the meaning and how images are transferred from the artwork to the viewer and vice versa.
What exactly can museum-goers expect to experience in the multifaceted “Objects Being Taught They Are Nothing But Tools” exhibit?This show is about you as a viewer of art and what happens when you are standing in front of a sculpture or an image. It’s not just one-way that one image comes to you and tells you something. It’s a collaboration. Beom came at the idea as very poetic, as opposed to being shocking and conceptual. The installation of the exhibition will consist of pieces of artwork that will ask you to think and project your own images onto what is being exhibited. A lot of these sculptures are made of found and everyday objects but the theatricality of the setup will allow you to relate to that as if they were animated. So one side is fun and on the other is very deeply touching, because with Beom and his work, there isn’t a difference between animated and being an inanimate object. We all belong to one world and there is only one way to relate to one another. Everything is important.
Why is “Objects Being Taught They Are Nothing But Tools” a perfect exhibit pertaining to the Cleveland Museum of Art’s mission statement?
We are a museum and we offer to our viewers an experience with artworks, and therefore we are all about these relationships from viewing and learning from visual contexts and visual experiences all over throughout the museum. So in fact, this installation refers to what the museum does and why it exists: It refers to our mission and our reason of being and people’s experiences in the museum.
Finally, it may be an over-generalization but it appears the root of Beom’s exhibit is simply “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” Any truth to this thought?
Absolutely. One of my interns looking at the work talked about visual pragmatism. All of his work goes against visual pragmatism. It opens up the possibility to many different interpretations. Also, when you look at his work – just glancing at it – you just think it’s everyday objects. So it requires you to really be there and to spend time with it and sort of slow down your pace of everyday life and just look at these everyday objects for a moment and see them coming alive. I hope people understand how everything in life is important. That objects are not just tools and they are part of your lives like parts of your body and need to be treated well and looked at with different eyes than just pragmatic ones.
Kim Beom’s exhibit “Objects Being Taught They Are Nothing But Tools” runs Sun 11/14/10 through Sun 3/6/11 @ the Cleveland Museum of Art. Admission to the museum is free. For more information, call 888-CMA-0033 or visit http://ClevelandArt.org.
[Pictured; top: Objects Being Taught They Are Nothing But Tools (detail), 2010. Kim Beom (Korean, b. 1963). Daily objects, wooden chairs, blackboard with fluorescent light, wooden tables, single channel video on TV monitor (21 min., 8 sec.); approx. 165.5 x 427.5 x 230 cm (overall). Courtesy of the artist. © Kim Beom. Photo by Park Myung-Rae.]
[Pictured; bottom: A Rock That Was Taught It Was a Bird, 2010. Kim Beom (Korean, b. 1963). Stone, wood, wooden table, single channel video on 12-inch flat monitor (1 hr., 27 min., 30 sec.); approx. 146.8 x 220.5 x 127.7 cm (overall). Courtesy of the artist. © Kim Beom. Photo by Park Myung-Rae.]
Free-lance writer John Benson spends most of his time writing for various papers throughout Northeast Ohio. When he’s not writing about music or entertainment, he can be found coaching his two boys in basketball, football and baseball or watching movies with his lovely wife, Maria.