A first-generation woman sculptor who has mastered the orthodox grammar of sculpture

Awakening a primordial sensibility toward nature and ecology that has grown faint

The Seoul Museum of Art presents the Kim Yun Shin solo exhibition <Kim Yun Shin: Adding and Dividing, One> at SeMA Nam-Seoul through May 7.

<Kim Yun Shin: Adding and Dividing, One> is the first solo exhibition at a national or public art museum to spotlight Kim Yun Shin, a first-generation Korean woman sculptor who has been based in and working from Argentina since immigrating there in 1984. Commanding the orthodox grammar of sculpture, Kim Yun Shin uses natural materials such as wood and stone, drawing out to the fullest the inherent properties of each material, and thereby awakens a sensibility toward nature and a primordial sense that have grown faint in the digital age.

Focusing on the work philosophy of ‘Add Two Add One, Divide Two Divide One (合二合一 分二分一),’ this exhibition introduces Kim Yun Shin’s artistic world through some 70 works divided into four sections: lithographs, stone sculptures, wood sculptures, and recent works made in Korea.

▲In <1. Premonition>, the exhibition focuses on the lithographs Kim Yun Shin produced during her studies at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France (1964–1969), offering clues that foreshadow the artist’s formative world. In the lithographs of this period, one can already sense the common formal characteristics that would run through Kim Yun Shin’s later work—forms that seem to be variations on the taegeuk motif, a sense of space created through black-and-white contrast, and the expression of lines overlapping in different directions.

▲<2. Time of the Universe> presents her stone sculptures, which, although produced over a more limited period compared with the wood sculptures she continued throughout her life, involved the most arduous process. For Kim Yun Shin, onyx was in itself a condensed version of the earth, in which the time the universe has passed through lies stacked in layers. Through the contrast between the natural surface of the stone and the interior planes she cut artificially, the artist expressed the order of cosmic forces.

▲<3. Adding and Dividing, One> presents the wood sculptures Kim Yun Shin has devoted herself to throughout her life, spanning from the 1970s to the 2010s and showing how her work changed over more than 40 years. ‘Adding and Dividing, One’ is a concise rendering of the meaning of <Add Two Add One, Divide Two Divide One>, the title Kim Yun Shin has consistently given her works since the late 1970s.

▲<4. Singing Tree> showcases the recent wood sculptures Kim Yun Shin has made while staying in Korea since 2022, along with one large-scale painting created in 2013. During the COVID period, Kim Yun Shin spent time in solitary contemplation, freely singing—through the medium of wood—the vitality of the soul that resonated from deep within her.

▲ Song of My Soul

▲ Premonition (1967)

▲ Add Two Add One, Divide Two Divide One 1994-507

▲ Add Two Add One, Divide Two Divide One 2001