Myeongbeom Kim- This Feeling is Untitled

Myeongbeom Kim does some questionable things with goldfish. But I'm dwelling in his work anyway because it's familiar. It belongs to the part of my brain that would like to try creating three-dimensional art objects, but never has, and perhaps never will because, as with olives, I just have a feeling we wouldn't mesh.

Sylvia Plath, had she sculpted rather than written, would have produced works like this. They would whisper that inanimate objects think about death while they glitter in the sun, and that goldfish are reincarnated balloons, which are reincarnated flower petals, and they will all shrivel in the exact same way.


I like that so many of his Kim's works have a lifespan, that they sicken and die so prettily, that they are adored in death like martyrs . I like his tree stumps and candle wax, and I like that his surrealism is unapologetically quite traditional, quite painterly. I like that his flowers leer at you and his nooses caress you, and the sensation is the same. I love that his ideas dwell in the fragile bodies of helium balloons and glass jars. Both aesthetically and ideologically, his installations reach. Upward, downward, toward you. Toward me. They cannot bear the small interiors of souls and hearts, impossibly central and far too quiet to keep as company. They mutter to themselves and are silent, and then mutter again like creatures left too long alone in the dark. Can an object be deranged? These are. But lovely, like Ophelia. There's rue for you; and here's some for me.



Images:
1) Imigration (spelling intentional!)- Boat, Oak Tree, Lawn
2) Untitled- Balloon, Oak Tree
3) Untitled- Deer Taxidermy, Branch, Leaves
4) Untitled (before)- Glass, Steel, Sunflower
5) Untitled (after)- Glass, Steel, Sunflower