artist entry: week 04: sept 20

ATTA KIM: photography: all things eventually, however, disappear

interest and relations:
Kim's work explores the nature of man kind. He also explores it with the most graceful method, long exposures, a passive act of witnessing and recording. Waiting behind the lens to see the actions fold and play out, with not much force or shaping, but just letting the nature of visual happenings happen. I really enjoy the mystical nature of the imagery. It is sort of a gift. Eight long hours have been compressed into one two-dimensional photograph for you to see. It is kind of like a cheat-sheet in life. It is like being given a map, rather than you yourself explore the land. Given that the experience cannot compare, but it is a condensed artifact of life.

biography:
"Atta Kim (born 1956) is a South Korean photographer who has been active since the mid-1980s. He has exhibited his work internationally and was the first photographer chosen to represent South Korea in the São Paulo Biennial.

His early works were black and white portraits of subjects including psychiatric patients, individuals designated as "cultural assets" by the Korean government, and his own family. His later and most notable series of works have been exhibited as full color, large scale prints: The Museum Project, which depicts people "preserved" within Plexiglas cases placed in various settings, and ON-AIR, which uses long exposures and image compositing to make individual people and objects dissolve. Kim's work has been heavily influenced by Zen Buddhist concepts of interconnectedness and transience, and he commonly uses Buddhist iconography." - Wiki

quotes: "Eastern philosophy says, “The past has already passed, the future is not here yet, and the present cannot be held.” I know this is my best moment. We don’t know what is going to happen next. If my life is glorious today, then tomorrow will be an extension of today." - Atta Kim "Many New Yorkers went off crying seeing the one I took in New York," Kim said. "They couldn't bear to see their vigorous city empty. But I told them just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there. The void does not mean emptiness but actually means everything." -Atta Kim

images:

review link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/12/arts/design/12atta.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/galleries/the_museum_project.php

artist & gallery link:
http://www.attakim.com/main.html