As a child, I used to find shiny silvery pieces in the play ground and park.
Although I kept them as precious jewels, they were only crushed pieces of kitchen foils from chocolate wraps and sweets.

Jomi Kim

Unearthing a New Worth

As a child a favourite pass time was the search for buried treasure. Trawling in the earth beneath the towering fir trees of the garden an earnest archaeological dig was often underway. And what arose from the ground? Nothing more than fragments of crockery and shards of glass, yet these slivers of a past human presence, which had somehow journeyed into the earth’s crust, buried from the human world of light, in being unearthed became treasures of a 1000 stories.

　In Jomi Kim’s installation we return to a naïve wonder at the hidden riches carried by the earth. And here again the sense of adventure and discovery is reawakened, traversing a terrain laden with an emerging presence.

And what is her treasure? Not the splinters of a past domesticity, but the evolving forms of aluminium foil. A rather functional substance, which pervades our everyday, a protective film to preserve its contents, yet once removed becoming useless.

　Yet despite being the most abundant metal in the earth’s crust and one of the world’s most used metals after steel, this commonplace aluminium was once a great rarity, so much so that it was even more expensive than gold or silver in the mid 19^th century, at the time of its formal discovery. Such a condition revisits the legend of aluminium in which according to the scribe Plinius at the turn of the millennium the Roman Emperor Tiberius was once presented with a brilliant goblet of shining metal of remarkable lightness by a craftsman claiming the substance to have been extracted from ordinary clay. Identifying the value of such a material the emperor in fact had the craftsman executed for fear this substance would render his fortune of gold and silver worthless.

　 In Kim’s installation this everyday material is again transformed to its former richness. In an alchemic process a familiar substance is purified to a remarkable phenomenon and we are confronted by the possibility of a radical new value in what is usually considered to be simply disposable. Here aluminium is returned to its original worth. It is also returned to its original state. In its common use in everyday life this material is seemingly manmade, molded into the various vessels from aircraft to packaging, yet this metal is an element, a naturally occurring substance to be found within nature, a part of nature. Here in this installation we are reminded of these origins as the material seemingly emerges from or returns to the earth in a simultaneous unfurling diffusion and drawing convergence.

　 The malleable shapeshifting of this kitchen foil further invests the sense of movement and growth, as if living forms propagating through the dark wet soil, from which they rise in a cascade of reflections from their sheened surfaces, a play of light in which one moment they are the dull featureless detritus of our continuous consumption, the next the radiant treasures of another world. This paradox, this transitive state, this revisioning of the inconsequential, this digging the ground, this uncovering of that hidden from the human eye, this is perhaps what may be identified as a fundamental essence of art. Kim’s installation is therefore a invitation to unearth a process of metamorphosis, to trace of a journey, to open up a new story and to be caught by the element of surprise.

Independent Curator　 　Emma Ota

Beings in the Domain Outside of the System of Meanings

The fallen hair in the apartment, evidence of the former resident, gathered on the comb and formed into the shape of a plant just finished preparation to breed.

The balloon filled with plenty helium is nothing but a balloon. But the half deflated balloon, which is drifting in the room, seems to try to escape from being a balloon. It suddenly trembles when I shut the entrance door of the gallery at closing time and the next morning when I open the door, it sidles up to me with joy.　

The tiny and tightly rolled up receipt once grew drastically like overflowing water.　Its seal was removed and it ended up forming a rose with red lines of the last part to express itself.

The above is a small list of my personal impressions from some of Jomi Kim’s works. At a glance, her works appear quiet and modest without strong self-assertiveness.　But, they aren't passive objects, rather they seem to act voluntarily.　Their behaviors are so interesting and sometimes cute that I am inspired to exchange opinions with others. I have heard of many people who encountered her works, and felt the same need to talk about their experience with others. It might be said her art is addictive.

Jomi Kim herself is also avoiding excessive statements on her works. But she always has crucial motivations and develops her works with contemplation. For me her works seem to be struggling to escape from the domain of the system of meanings, and these acts bring vivid images and striking questions to us. Needless to say, in the contemporary art, such a stance is the one of the main themes and is shared by not only her but also by many other artists. She has an amazingly superior sense for finding the area on the outside of language ; in other words, the field where anything seems alienated from its original meaning and then emerges with the different aspects. Based on these excellent senses, she has become a productive and large scale artist who can continuously create high quality art works.

I sometimes associate Jomi's works with 'Odradek'　which, appeared on 'The Cares of a Family Man' ‘Die Sorge des Hausvaters’, a short story written by Franz Kafka. ‘Odradek' is a small harmless creeping creature living in between gaps of the world, known by everyone but easily forgotten. Resembling a flat star-shaped spool and an insect at the same time, it has a dry voice sound like autumn leaves, sometimes going somewhere for a while but always returning. People around it are rather worried that it would never die.

'Odradek' is somewhat strange and it is hard to find aesthetic elements in it. On the other hand, Jomi Kim's works look graceful, earnest and elegant. But from my personal point of view, there is something similar between 'Odradek'　and Jomi's works. Jomi's works are as mysterious as 'Odradek'.　 Both are residents of the domain outside of the system of meanings, which is located in the vicinity of our neighbourhood, but most of us don’t realize that.

I suggest it would be more appropriate to consider Jomi's work as creatures existing there, just like 'Odradek' rather than objects as expressions by the artist.

ArtLabAkiba　　 Kentaro Chiba