Oksun Kim; Happy Together
July 15 - August 6, 2004
Gallery Korea at the Korean Cultural Center New York
(460 Park Ave. 6th Floor, New York, NY 10022)
Gallery Korea is pleased to announce that Oksun Kim, a participant in the P.S.1 International Studio Program 2003-2004, will hold a solo exhibition titled Happy Together.
In this exhibition, Kim will examine the true happiness of intercultural couples, not only through photographs of other married people, but also of herself and her husband. Unencumbered by elaborate lighting or special techniques, the pure and realistic representations in Kim's work bring out various and abundant stories. Kim, who is married to a German, questions her own doubts and examines the issues of happiness in ordinary life. The women pictured gaze directly into the camera, causing discomfort in the viewers, and, clearly, in the husbands pictured. In fact, the viewer may understand the husbands' reaction of turning away as their wives face the camera straight on. Through her work, Kim challenges the viewer to rethink the difficulties of encountering different cultures and our attitudes towards accepting these differences.
Kim's previous exhibitions, titled Woman in a Room and Woman in a Room 2, captured images of women's nude, pure bodies in order to reveal Kim's perceptions of women in modern society. As in Happy Together, Kim's austere photographs used no complicated methods to render the representation; thus, Kim extended her doubts on the actuality of the human body.
Oksun Kim was born in 1967 in Seoul, Korea. In 1989, she graduated from Sookmyung University. She received her bachelor's degree in Industrial Design and Photography in 1996 from Hongik University. In 2002, she held the Happy Together exhibition in Seoul at the Alternative Space POOL, following her other two solo exhibitions Woman in Room 2 (2002) and Woman in Room (1996). Kim has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Seoul, Korea, such as Rediscover Daily Life of Seoul (2003) at the Ssamzie Space, Best Star Best Artist (2003) at the Gana Art Center and Image Korea (2003) at the Korea Art Center. Additionally, she has participated in various group exhibitions abroad: Wind and People (2002) in the Sendai Mediatheque and Saitama Modern Art Museum in Japan and Contemporary Photographers from Korea (2002) at La Galerie Photo de Montpellier in France. Kim is currently a participant in the P.S.1 International Studio Program 2003-2004 and is planning to stay in the United States until August.
Gallery Korea, run by the Korean Cultural Service in New York, presents exhibitions devoted to diverse aspects of Korean and Korean diasporic culture, as well as group shows featuring international artists.
Please contact curator Jin Yong Chung for further information: (212) 759-9550 or nyarts@koreanculture.org