Kyeok Kim

Kyeok Kim is a contemporary Korean artist whose practice spans sculpture, monumental illuminated sculpture, furniture and installation. Over more than two decades, she has developed a distinctive artistic language centred on memory, time, material transformation and the relationship between light and perception.

Kim studied Metal Art & Design at Hongik University in Seoul, completing her BFA in 2002, before moving to London to study Goldsmithing, Silversmithing, Metalwork & Jewellery at the Royal College of Art, where she received her MA in 2006. She later completed a PhD in Metal Art & Design at Hongik University in 2016. Her early work in jewellery investigated immateriality through marks, impressions and perfume left upon the skin. This interest in the body and the traces carried by its surface became the foundation for an enquiry she has continued to develop for more than twenty years.

From this research emerged Second Surface, an evolving body of work through which Kim considers skin as both a protective boundary and a repository of memory. Using hair-fine copper wire as though it were thread, she crochets interconnected structures derived from the repetitive patterns of skin cells. The initially fragile networks are transformed through the application of ottchil, traditional Korean natural lacquer, which strengthens the copper while retaining the delicacy of its woven structure. Kim describes the individual links as analogous to memories: accumulated through repetition, one calling forth another until they form a larger interconnected whole.

Her practice has subsequently expanded from intimate objects and vessels into furniture, wall works, illuminated sculpture and monumental installations. At larger scales, the crocheted structures move beyond the object and enter into a direct relationship with architecture, light and surrounding space. Second Surface Wall works extend the language of skin into permeable, immersive fields, while Kim’s illuminated works use light as an active element within the sculpture, altering its visual density and generating shifting relationships between material, shadow and space.

Material experimentation has become increasingly central to Kim’s practice. Alongside copper and ottchil, she has investigated gold leaf, wood, jute, clay, charcoal and carbon powder, continually developing surfaces through accumulation and transformation. Her recent Surface of Memory works extend this enquiry further, bringing material research and illumination into increasingly direct dialogue.

Kim’s work has been presented in more than 80 exhibitions across Asia, Europe and the United States. Her exhibitions include KOREA NOW! at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, in 2015. In 2021, her monumental woven-copper Second Surface installation was selected as a finalist for the LOEWE Foundation Craft Prize.