Cahiers d'Art is pleased to present untitled utopias, the first exhibition in France of Korean artist Kim Yong-Ik. The exhibition will feature three new series of prints produced by the artist in collaboration with Cahiers d'Art in Paris this year.
Primarily known as a painter, Kim Yong-Ik will show three series of new prints at Cahiers d’Art produced in February 2018 in Paris at the renowned Idem print studio. According to Kim Yong-Ik, we have entered the era of collection, deconstruction and compilation, an age where editing is a required process for art-making. In place of creating new works, the artist presents a clear reframing of his practices by reappropriating and reinterpreting past ideas.
The first series, entitled Untitled 18 1 - 18 6 draws inspiration from his instantly recognisable dot paintings. Echoing the seriality of his predecessors within Korea but seeking to remove the artist’s hand, these works have a feeling of machine-made uniformity created through the lithographic printing process itself. In an edition of 12 these prints will be available either as suites or individually. The second series, entitled Utopia 18 1 - 18 6 focuses on the artist’s interest in geometric abstraction, as well as the interplay between different surfaces. For this series Kim Yong-Ik has combined collage with drawn rectangular shapes and coloured dots or rectangles, neither though is given more importance over the other. Also in an edition of 12 these prints will be available as suites or individually.
As a way to continue this investigation into the hand-made and the machine- made, both of the above series, Untitled and Utopia, will then also be presented in hand-painted versions, available as a complete suite of six.
In the exhibition Cahiers d’Art will also feature two unique works on paper, one diptych and one triptych, that will inform the print series, as well as compliment them.
Cahiers d’Art is also in the early stages of publishing a monograph on the artist, slated for release in the fall of 2018, in collaboration with Tina Kim and Kukje Gallery. Included in this book will be texts by Beck Jee-Sook, and MOCA L.A. director Philippe Vergne, who has ensured a work by Kim is now in this illustrious establishment’s permanent collection.