Boxing Kim

BOXING KIM

WORK IN PROGRESS

ATTA KIM

The Museum Project is the series I have been working on since 1994, and a continuation of the deconstruction work in which I've been engaged since 1988. All the works start with finding a location and take the form of installation and performance. Finally, the result is recorded in photographs.

For me, all existing things have their own historicity and value as relics. In the Museum Project, the museum as defined in a dictionary is deconstructed and my own private museum is constructed. The backgrounds for this project are any and all settings in natural and urban spaces. In spite of their specificity as individual places, when glass boxes are set in them, these locales become my stage, my museum. Glass boxes in this project are a kind of formalin that turns human beings into stuffed specimens; this puts distance between the object and the viewer.

Another series, “War Memorial,” tells a story about the brute violence of the Korean and Vietnam Wars. The “Sex” series is about the instincts of the human being—which are not so different from those of animals. The “Whore” series is about the evolution of people that buy and sell sex. By putting diverse kinds of people in glass boxes, I detach them from reality and display and deconstruct at the same time my own concept about the world.

The “Nirvana" series is the most recent part of the Museum Project. In this series, the glass box works as another ideology, which may itself be deconstructed in turn. Here, religious ideology is brought down to the level of the space of everyday life. The models are monks and ordinary people. Buddha said, “I am exactly the same as all the people. Anybody can become a buddha, including very miscellaneous beings.” I sympathize with this remark. But the “Nirvana” series is not just about Buddhism. In #142, Buddha and Christ are in the same figure. This means that once all the ideologies are annihilated, all the ideas can become concrete things that are visual and tactile and can be shared in the actual space.

I am neither a Buddhist nor a Christian, but an existentialist seeking to grasp a new world of spirit through my work. ©