November 13, 2010-March 6, 2011
Photography Galleries

With an expressive vocabulary that relies on deadpan humor, absurdist enunciation, poetry, and childlike imagery, Kim Beom investigates our perception of the world by bringing reality and imagination closer together. Developed around illusionism, Kim's art references animistic notions that individual works possess a spiritual core, and it alludes to the 20th-century avant-gardes who mined the human subconscious and practiced a kind of social awareness. Kim inspires the viewer to become actively engaged-or even entangled-in the projection of images and thoughts. Fusing the position of artist and docent, and merging the art object with the larger social field, his works stand for how we invest art with meaning.

This exhibition features three new installations and a selection of drawings from 1994 to the present. It introduces Kim's multifaceted work in a variety of media, as well as his continued reflection on Korean society and its recent history.

Kim was born in 1963 in Seoul, South Korea. He obtained a BFA and an MFA from Seoul National University in 1986 and 1988, respectively, and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, in 1991. He lives and works in Seoul.

The Cleveland Museum of Art is generously funded by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture. The Ohio Arts Council helped fund this exhibition with state tax dollars to encourage economic growth, educational excellence, and cultural enrichment for all Ohioans.