Seungwoo Kim
Korea, Republic of
7 Works exhibited on Kooness
Current location
Seoul, South Korea
Represented by
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Works by Seungwoo Kim
Kim Seungwoo is a contemporary Korean sculptor who lives and works in Seoul, South Korea.
Kim Seungwoo is known for his sculptures made from coins. In his practice, the artist relies on the Buddhist principle of non-attachment. Considering coins as a material, rather than as a value in itself, the artist reflects on the pros and cons of money, trying to reflect in his works reflections on social ambitions and cultural values.
Money has an inexplicable ability to attract and hypnotize the viewer. Kim Seungwoo looks at our relationship with money, hiding behind its physical beauty on the surface. In depth – behind the creation of these works is a persistent meditative work on collecting and building coins into a single artistic image. One by one, the artist stacks the coins without stopping, creating complex, surprisingly detailed three-dimensional sculptures. Each of them eventually consists of hundreds of thousands of coins. Endless repetitive actions are a time of fatigue and deprivation. Since the coins are collected with great difficulty, the sculpture becomes similar to the phrase "hard-earned money".
Kim Seungwoo, on the one hand, plays with the audience, waiting for a reaction to the eternal struggle of art and money provocatively combined in his sculptures, on the other – with Buddhist philosophy approaching the process of creating works, suggests the viewer a way to learn how to build relationships with money, without falling into the extreme of impulsive renunciation, but also without emotionally becoming attached to them, and asks a koan-like question: "Art is money, or money is art?".