and the vast traces of the ebbing tide
draw a circle as they flow eastward,
toward the pillar of ultramarine.”
— Arthur Rimbaud, “Marine,” Illuminations, 1886
In Byoungho Kim’s exhibition Symmetric Garden, the encounter with “ultramarine” signals the artist’s orientation toward another realm. Just as Rimbaud’s “pillar of ultramarine” in “Marine,” Illuminations (1886) was not merely a landscape but a poetic image pointing to an unfamiliar horizon beyond the sea—an infinitely expanding, transcendent world and its depths—so too might it represent for Kim an undisclosed marker, a sign toward the unseen. The term ultramarine derives from the Latin ultra mare, meaning “beyond the sea.” It refers to the deep blue pigment extracted from lapis lazuli mined in the Badakhshan region of Afghanistan—a color once reserved for the Virgin Mary’s robes during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and valued more highly than gold. Fragments of vivid ultramarine—evoking both the transcendental dimension and the material origin of lapis lazuli—animate the massive yet sleek metallic systems presented in Symmetric Garden. Within the coldness of metal, the precision of symmetry, the repetition of modules, and the rigor of industrial order, the artist conducts an experiment in color as a subtle vibration of perception. Over the past two decades, Kim has distilled a mechanical sculptural language that both mediates industrial systems and probes the sensorial potential of art through color.
Namhee PARK (Art Critic, Director of Nam June Paik Art Center)
An excerpt from the introduction text to Symmetric Garden, a solo exhibition at the Jiushi Art Museum Art Salon(Shanghai, China) in 2024