Join us for our next segment of Coffee & Conversations with South Korean artist Kim Beom who is back in Singapore for the second phase of his residency. He will be joined by Sunjung Kim, the director of the Art Sonje Center, Seoul, and artistic director of the REAL DMZ PROJECT, which engages issues surrounding the division of Korea and the border region near the demilitarized zone.

From 1998 to 2004, Sunjung Kim was the chief curator at the Art Sonje Center, Seoul, and in 2005 was Commissioner of the Korean Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale. In addition to Kim, she has worked on numerous exhibitions of artists such as Martin Creed, Haegue Yang, Shinro Ohtake, Lee Bul, Jewyo Rhii, Sung Hwan Kim, and Abraham Cruzvillegas at the Art Sonje Center. Through Samuso, Kim established and curated Platform Seoul, an annual art festival whose editions include “Platform in KIMUSA: Void of Memory” (2009) and co-curated the “Your Bright Future: 12 Contemporary Artists From Korea” exhibition in 2009 at LACMA and MFAH. Kim has taken many roles in a wide range of projects: Artistic Director of Media City Seoul (2010), Artistic Co-Director of Gwangju Biennale (2012), Agent for DOCUMENTA 13 (2013), and Artistic Director of ACC Research & Archive in Asian Culture Center in Gwangju (2014-2015).

At STPI, Kim Beom challenges perceptions and reflect on the metaphysical—”we don’t know who we are, we don’t know where we are, we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, but we all run no matter what we are”. Through an expansive practice that spans drawing, sculpture, video and artist books, Kim contemplates a world in which perception is radically questioned. His visual language is characterised by deadpan humour and absurdist propositions that playfully and subversively invert expectations. His works have been shown in institutions including the Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver, Canada), Hayward Gallery (London, UK), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LA) and Artsonje Center (Seoul, Korea).