KJCKorea
Journal Central

Kim Kulim's artistic practice is a kind of deconstruction of meaning which 1s equivalent to Deconstructivism especially that of Jacques Derrida. The very ground on which he and Deconstructivists meet is that they question the method or process of signification. In other words, they negate the principle of 'identity' itself. They doubt the subject identified with the sign, the signifier identified with the signified, and the sample identified with the concept. As an artist, Kim Kulim performs multiple personas throughout his career. He denies the presence of unique and consistent artist by doing heterogenous works and by appropriating motifs and methods of other artists. That is, the link of identification between the artist-subject and the sign he makes gets loose in his work. The artist-subject is not the subject per se but the "subject-effect'' which floats from position to position in the context. He practices Derrida's concept of "nonpresence" or "the death of author" which Roland Barthes declared. In the textual space, not only the subject but also the sign he makes is not unique and consistent. In Kim Kulim's work, the link between image and its meaning, between the signifier and the signified is denied. That is, one signifier produces different signifieds and one signified is represented by many signifiers. The work and its process of signification could be called as "differance", the term Derrida made to designate the game of different signifiers, which is permanently deferred. Kim Kulim also loosen the link of identification between the concept of 'art' and its sample. He discloses and denies 'the myth of identification' not only artist-subject and artwork but also in the categorical concept of 'art'. He calls attention to the frame which defines art as art, and reveals its arbitrariness by blurring the boundary between artwork and ordinary thing, art and life. He works on the frame as a "parergon" which Derrida described as being attached to the "ergon" and also intervening to it If modernists give attention to "ergon", Kim Kulim turns his attention to "parergon" which has been marginalized by modernist concept of art. By that reason he could be called as postmodernist. In short, he has deconstructed the artist-subject, art work, and the concept of 'art' itself Ironically, this work of deconstruction is constructed and continued by that very act of deconstruction.

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