The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of March 28, 2024

A Rock That Was Taught It Was a Bird

A Rock That Was Taught It Was a Bird

2010
(Korean, b. 1963)
Overall: 146.8 x 220.5 x 127.7 cm (57 13/16 x 86 13/16 x 50 1/4 in.)
© Kim Beom
Location: not on view

Did You Know?

This sculptural assemblage is a commentary on authoritarian regimes.

Description

The man in the video repeats “You are a bird!” to a rock, while a sculptural assemblage to the left features a rock posed like a bird on a bough. A Rock That Was Taught It Was a Bird is one of Kim’s poetic, poignant works on authoritarian regimes—South Korea, for example, during the 1970s and ’80s—where education was frequently used as a tool to influence people’s view about the world and themselves.

Beom Kim is a Seoul-based artist whose mixed-media works are internationally well known. His art explores the intersection of various artistic genres and media including poetry, drawing, video, painting, and installation. Kim often uses ready-made objects—in this work, a wooden table, a stone, and a tree bough—and turns them into a sculptural assemblage.
  • Artist's studio
  • McCormick, Sooa Im. “Playbook for Solitude.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 61, no. 1 (Winter 2021): 12. Reproduced and Mentioned: P. 12.
  • Kim Beom: How to Become a Rock. Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea (Republic of) (organizer) (July 18-November 26, 2023) https://www.leeum.org/exhibition/exhibition01_detail.asp?seq=61.
    Stories From Storage. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 7-May 16, 2021).
    Korean Gallery 236 Rotation. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (January 29-July 16, 2018).
    Kim Beom: Objects Being Taught They Are Nothing But Tools. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (November 14, 2010-March 6, 2011); REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/Cal Arts Theatre), Los Angeles, CA (organizer) (April 21-June 19, 2011).
  • {{cite web|title=A Rock That Was Taught It Was a Bird|url=false|author=Kim Beom|year=2010|access-date=28 March 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2010.263