Dark Aesthetics of Totems – Anxiety and Marvel
First impressions of Byoungho KIM’s work often pertain to the sculptures’ metallicity, geometriclucidity, or polished form. Ironically, his sculptures imply anxiety and fright. Like the “Gilded Age,” an era and phrase coined by Mark Twain, Kim’s sculptures have mirror-like surfaces and are highly well made than any other sculpture; nonetheless, the anxiety and fright inherent in them become more apparent, perhaps more so the more well-made they are. In explaining the characteristics of dark aesthetics, Hal Foster took Alberto Giacometti’s Woman with Her Throat Cut(1932) as an example. This insect-like form of a disemboweled woman is menacing, with its sharp edges and pointed spines. Foster interpreted these as projections of desires rooted in deficiency, the frustration caused by taboo and suppression, and the contempt and rage against the subject created by such experiences. In other words, dark aesthetics of the uneasy and threatening Woman with Her Throat Cut is an aggregation of desire, taboo, and contempt. Through it, we don’t experience the beauty of relief and satisfaction, but rather an uneasy and marvelous sublimity—in other words, “compulsive beauty” created by anxiety.
Kim’s sculptures also fall within the boundary of dark aesthetics. His works slowly elevate tension by causing anxiety and fear and overwhelm the viewer. This feeling of anxiety also transforms into a sense of marvel through the sensual and tactile surface and dazzling metallic colors of the sculptures. A pivotal clue to understanding his work is retrieved from the fact that the word “marvel” has been in use since the medieval era and indicated fissure in order. The sculptures are based on geometric lucidity, symmetry, and balance, but they also generate a type of self-contradictory marvel that deviate from order and the norm. For example, the order created by the aluminum poles of various and vivid colors is apparent in Garden (2013), but the sharp, piercing tips and the subtle 7° slant of the poles maintain a sense of tension and anxiety. Through these details, Kim’s works reject complacency oriented toward stability and refuse unfounded happy endings. This characteristic is also apparent in Doubt (2013) and Anniversary about the Memories series. Their blade-like edges, piercing sharpness, and the feeble sound of the piezo that repeat like auditory hallucinations demand constant anxiety rather than an indifferent gaze.
Sublime Repetition
The sublime is caused by dark aesthetics. This sublimity is built on the terror caused by deep valleys, silence of deep seas, and the endless repetition of a single form. Ironically, the fear incurred by the repeated forms offers aesthetic pleasure that viewers want to experience again, which is sublimity. Repetition of a single shape or form as the cause of sublimity has been the foundation of Kim’s work since early 2006. Repetition has been the stylistic basis of his most representative series, Silent Pollen and Vertical Garden, which continued for over ten years. Three Hundred Silent Pollens (2009) was the first series with a title that specified the number of the repeated module, and through this work, the artist stepped closely to the topic of reproduction. Silent Pollen series are installations with as few as 70 to as many as a few hundred or few thousand copied trumpet-like modules. The series itself signifies the mass production system that was impossible in the premodern era and points to contemporary reproduction systems. The distinction of the original and copied are meaningless in this “postmodern” repetition. These repetitions not only demonstrate self-reproduction, but also boast their formidable sizes and splendors by resembling massive living organisms, and thereby lead us to experience magnificence, awe, and even astonishing sublimity.
Later, between 2011 and 2013, Kim’s modules became saliently diverse. Concave disks shaped like tear holders were used in Two Hundred Ninety One Drops of Tear (2013) and ovoid-tipped modules with long stems appeared in Vertical Garden series. In The Manipulation (2013) and Mediated Memory (2016), he used bullet-shaped modules with pointed tips on either side. These repeated modules resemble ready-mades; yet, in fact, they are pseudo ready-mades—the modules are both mass-produced clones of one another and “digital creations” resulting from Kim’s computer graphic work. Along the same lines, it can be said that Kim’s sculptures appear as though they succeed Marcel Duchamp’s ready-mades, which replaced the act of creation with that of selection. However, Kim’s modular sculptures imply that even ready-mades are outdated traditions and present dark humor that deceives invalid authorities of modernism.
Mechanical Totems of Compulsive Beauty
Repetitions derive from compulsion. Sigmund Freud explained compulsive repetition as active self-control against trauma. In other words, repetition results from the operation of defense mechanisms or can be described as a method of self-healing, wherein trauma is mitigated by repeating less traumatic experiences. This brings light to why we are so drawn to dark aesthetics or compulsive beauty. Anxietycausing repetition is ultimately related to self-preservation, and repetitions in Byoungho Kim’s works that slowly come to take specific forms also attest to this idea in another way. Repetitions of uncanny forms like sharp edges and needle-like tips can also be understood as the defense mechanism reacting to the trauma of desire, which is the ill of the postmodern society.
This interpretation is also supported by the modules that transform into specific forms as they are repeated and attached to one another. Mediated Memory (2016) installed at the Songgwangsa Temple and the Gods series, which commenced in 2018, expand the influence of self-defense and self-healing to the public space. Mediated Memory (2016) resembles a stone pagoda erected by unknown people, and its meaning is diversified through its installation at a place where various contexts are proposed instead of in a white cube reserved for exhibitions. The artist explains that his focus was on the context of the public place and the public energy present in it. Then Buddhist followers’ confessions that “they come to see each individual carrying the seed of nirvana” through Mediated Memory perhaps capture such interplay of energies. To Kim, repetition is now more than just a simple arrangement of modules—it has evolved to engage questions like how should modules be repeated?
Soft Crash (2011) and Aero-Interface (2012) were created when Kim was experimenting with forms. During the same period, Kim focused on how to use repetition to create specific shapes, and module assembly eventually developed into an important stylistic characteristic of his work. In thinking about attaching modules to each other or to the main unit, he adopted an approach like that of working with pseudo ready-mades. His works are not bound to art forms that rely on great achievements of modernism as is the case with welded sculptures. Instead of welding the modules, Kim used pins to connect them or improved precision by using computer graphic programs so the modules are connected without even the slightest gap. Works after 2016, including the Vertical Garden series, thus confirm once again that his works are machine-creature hybrids or machinery totems built of seamlessly connected modules. Kim also repeated numerous simulations to produce shapes and surface material that would maximize reflection. As a result, his machinery totems maximize sexuality through their sleek and lustrous finish as if they recall our inherent desires, but they prevent us from getting closer, just as totems considered taboos do.
Byoungho KIM’s frightening yet enchanting sculptures can be explained as fatal attractions. His recent works, especially Vertical Garden series, Anniversary about the Memories series, or Beautiful Reflection (2018) born from Anniversary about the Memories, can be explained as machinery totems, which are agglomerations of phobia caused by posthumanism and taboos led by sexuality or desire derived from postmodern fetishism. Given that taboo is the counterevidence of strong desire, Kim’s machinery totems are then epitomes of dark aesthetics generated by the interdependency of erotic and destructive impulses, and they are also portraits of today’s fetishist society characterized by desire.