It is within the framework of the 130th anniversary of diplomatic relations between France and Korea that the contemporary gallery of the MAMAC is hosting this Korean artist.
Peter Kim was born in 1967 in South Korea, and graduated in the late ’90s from the Marseille School of Art and Design. Since then, he has pursued his career in the United States.
His work consists of lines and points connected to each other. The artist highlights the lines and the necessity of being aware of their reality. He critiques this society made by the individual for the individual, this materialism driven by an endless race for more. With the series of floating bowls, he attempts to restore to humans their roots.
Knowing how to wait, stop, and admire this chipped bowl. Why chipped? Material perfection erases creation, everything is manufactured in advance, without surprise, without blemish, the bowl is perfect, but is it beautiful? Is it a bowl? No, at least Peter Kim gives meaning to his bowls: “The bowl allows everyone to reflect on themselves.”
The artist is also a writer; his book, My Struggle, denounces the technicality of the world destroying humanity. Modern society is the world of every man for himself, with no more relationships between people. The artist takes us into his world where dreaming is perpetual. These gray bowls on a gray background, barely sketched by the fineness of the line. “
To create lines, one must have a conscience.” Everything is said in one sentence. Awareness of being, of existing, of being a human being, having a soul and a reality. Peter Kim offers us colorful works where the colors are barely faded, pastels. The fine, ethereal, and airy line, the objects (the bowls) his entire work shows his discretion, Peter does not explode; on the contrary, he is on the search, in the quest for wisdom.
The lines, lines, and points are ultimately a writing, a code whose keys he provides to us to understand the end of all existence and the true priorities far removed from the ideals of a society with triumphant capitalism and the new Mammon: consumption.
This Korean artist is a sage. With his bowls, we will remember the Holy Grail, each of them potentially being its representation. A musical and poetic exhibition to be approached with a child’s heart, as it evokes the purity and beauty of well-born souls.
ThierryJan
