push against the air 01

2007 - Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)
19 5/16 x 29 1/8 inches

Sung Hwan Kim created the drawing push against the air 01 during a rehearsal for his eponymous 2007 performance at De Apple (as part of Prix de Rome), Amsterdam, and Project Arts Centre, Dublin. For the performance, Kim interviews his frequent collaborator David Michael DiGregorio and a fellow musician, Byungjun Kwon, about love songs they have composed. The performance appears spontaneous and creates a space of vulnerability and intimacy, however in reality, the three rehearsed the performance numerous times and performed it in numerous cities. These rehearsals were composed of laborious and repetitive practices through conversing, pausing, playing, operating, and drawing in the rhythm embedded in the recorded conversations DiGregorio, Kwon, and Kim had on Kwon’s radio show in Korea, titled World Music Journal , broadcasted nationwide from 2004 to 2005. During the performance, while Kim interviewed the other two participants, he operated the camera with his left hand, while constantly drawing (as if he was doodling) with his right hand. The artist placed the camera below the drawings so the audience could see the projected images, placed behind the two composers/musicians. At a certain point in the performance, Kim spoke about the drawings themselves to invoke the concept of “reversing the relationship between the host and the guest”. In this sense, this drawing is not a visual exploration, representation, or metaphor for something else; instead it takes center stage during the performance, while the music becomes the backdrop and the atmosphere for the drawing’s movement and Kim’s storytelling.

In his practice, Sung Hwan Kim assumes the role of director, editor, performer, composer, narrator, and poet. Working with video and performance art, Kim assembles encounters, sounds, sculptures, and images inspired by his alternating homes in Seoul, Amsterdam, and New York. Bringing together Korean culture, the history of performance and film, and inspiration from pioneering artists such as Joan Jonas, Kim’s practice is a robust and complex mode of visual story-telling. Engaging with Korea’s history, modernity, architecture, and social structures, as well as notions of urbanity, domesticity, and matriarchy, Kim merges narrative and documentary forms. The artist often interweaves real footage and interviews from a variety of sources with more poetic sequences of text or choreography. Sound and musical compositions are significant elements in many of Kim’s video works; the soundtracks are often developed by the artist’s frequent collaborator, the musician David Michael DiGregorio, also known as dogr.

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