Cheolyu Kim 5th solo exhibition
WARP5
OPENING THURSDAY 12 MAR 5PM
Guest of Honour: 5:30PM speech by Professor Jing Han
Western Sydney University Director of the Australia-China Institute for Arts and Culture
Exhibition period 12 March - 11 April
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WARP5
Exhibition period March 12 - April 11
In WARP 5, South Korean artist Cheolyu Kim renders surreal dreamscapes to understand his very real childhood anxieties growing up near the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea. To move at warp speed is to create a bubble that distorts space and time, allowing travel from one point of the universe to another. Cheolyu explores the cosmic horror and sheer force of the DMZ, venturing into an interdimensional hyperreality.
This hyperreality is found in the ring-shaped forms of the WARP 5 series, which are studies of movement through time and space. Through stratified spirals, one is hypnotically led to the abyss. The hole is an important characteristic in these drawings as one is pulled closer and deeper. By imagining these “warp bubbles” as taking one from one place to be folded at lightspeed to another, then one is seeing the absolute expression of Cheolyu’s “journey to nowhere”.
The imaginative realm, which is activated through the potential of art, allows us to more meaningfully engage and manage our current reality. The art of Cheolyu Kim is not just contemporary because it is connected to our current time but transcends the trajectory of our visual understandings through temporal ruptures and hyperreality. The place the art brings you to is one that pushes us beyond our consciousness by folding thought from one point to another.
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Cheolyu Kim is an experienced drawer and painter born in 1968 in Goseong and is currently based in Paju-si, South Korea. He holds an MFA in Sculpture from Brooklyn College-University of New York and a BFA in Sculpture from Chung-Ang University of Seoul.
His practice is entirely devoted to archival pen drawing on either paper or wood. The “outer-space fantasies” in his works is informed by a childhood raised in a 16-household village at the DMZ border between North and South Korea. Surrounded by mountains and clear night skies that young child saw strange objects journeying to and from nowhere: thousands of balloons often mysteriously emerge overnight carrying foreign and enigmatic propaganda; on one occasion a spy plane from a foreign land dropped and crashed from the skies.
His artistic excellence has earned him international acclaim, with exhibitions across South Korea, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, the UK, and Indonesia. With Redbase Art Sydney, Kim has exhibited five solo shows and participated in major international art fairs such as Sydney Contemporary, Art Jakarta, and Aotearoa Art Fair. His art is in major international collections, including Museum MACAN, Indonesia; Portland Art Museum, United States; Gwangju Museum of Art, and Yangpyung Art Museum, South Korea; and TWT Property Group, Australia.
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About REDBASE
REDBASE Art is based in Sydney and Yogyakarta, Indonesia. We are cross-cultural sites that envision the changing ideas about contemporary art in the Asia-Pacific. With a focus on Chinese, Indonesian, and Asian-Australian artists, REDBASE distinguishes itself by providing exposure to the next collective zeitgeist in a reimagined gallery context.
(+61) 2 9699 1409
(+61) 410 199 958
in...@redbaseart.com
2/19 Wellington St. Chippendale Sydney, NSW 2008, Australia
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