At 88, Kim Yun Shin Is Gaining Overdue Acclaim for Her Harmonious Paintings and Sculptures

Kim Yun Shin learned to make art out of scarcity. Born in the northern region of Korea in 1935 amid the throes of Japanese occupation, the artist developed her creativity with the few materials at hand—fashioning drawings and objects with sticks, sorghum straws, and melted candles. Before fleeing with her mother to Seoul, Kim—now 88—lived with her five siblings in the rural town of Anbyon until she was 10. There, she was raised near the sea and immersed in pine tree forests and blooming camellias. “Nature itself was both my teacher and my friend,” Kim told Artsy in a recent interview from Seoul.

“My awe for nature is not so much about the natural landscape itself but about the principles and order that nature possesses,” she continued. Over her six-decade-long career, the artist has focused on ideas derived from the natural world—like equilibrium, growth, and metamorphosis—in a painting and sculpture practice that foregrounds organic materials and intuitive processes. Today, Kim is gaining broader international recognition for her path-charting work after a prolonged period of underappreciation in the art market. Her dedication has been rewarded with a series of major achievements this year, including joint representation from Lehmann Maupin and Kukje Gallery—her first-ever representation by commercial galleries—and inclusion in the main exhibition at the upcoming Venice Biennale.

Kim was one of the first Korean women to receive formal education in sculpture, training at the department of sculpture at Hongik University in Seoul, from which she graduated in 1959. Then, in 1964, she relocated to Paris to continue her education in sculpture and lithography at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. This time abroad exposed her to a more active art scene than what she was familiar with in Seoul; specifically, it shed light on the unequal access to resources for women artists in Korea.

“‘There are so many female artists in Korea who graduated from art schools, but they are not able to do anything,’” Kim recalled thinking upon her return to Seoul in 1969. “‘In Paris, there is a global movement, and female artists are active. What a pity for our fellow Korean women artists.’” Motivated to carve out a space for her peers, Kim formed the Korean Women Sculptors Association in 1974 with Lee Yang-ja, Young Ja Yoon, and Kim Jeong-sook. The association, which remains active within the Korean art scene, offers resources and mentorship opportunities for female sculptors across South Korea.

At this time, Kim’s own sculptures were inspired by architecture, including the wooden fittings of hanoks (traditional Korean houses). Then, in 1978, she started her “Add two add one, Divide two divide one” series of wooden sculptures informed by the Eastern philosophy of yin-yang, which centers around the idea of balancing opposing forces. Works from this series, which has endured across decades, will be featured in Kim’s two upcoming solo presentations. Add Two Add One, Divide Two Divide One 2000-653 (2000) will be included in her show at Kukje in Seoul, on view from March 19th to April 28th; and Add Two Add One Divide Two Divide One 2012-21 (2012) will be shown at Lehmann Maupin in New York from March 14th to April 6th.

These assemblages employ wooden pieces that Kim cut with a chainsaw, crafting totemic vertical structures that mirror the trees from which the wood was derived. This cycle of deconstruction and reassemblage represents the artist’s ideas on balance and continuity. “As I cut away, I create new facets on the tree,” Kim said. “In this way, the faces that are created connect with each other.”

In Seoul, Kim worked as a professor at Sangmyung University until she received an invitation from her niece living in Argentina in the early 1980s. Upon arriving, she immediately felt captivated by the country. “The first thing that captured my attention was the beautiful horizon. The land and sky were flat. Secondly, the people were kind and gentle. Thirdly, there were trees, thick and lush trees,” she said. By this time, wood had become integral to her practice, and in Korea, the forests were thin after the war. For her, Argentina held abundant opportunities, including plenty of materials, like algarrobo and palo santo wood.

Kim’s move to Argentina also allowed her to escape the prevailing trends in Seoul—such as photorealistic, narrative, and figurative works. Instead, she developed a more idiosyncratic visual language through her textured assemblages and paintings. In many ways, “Song of My Soul,” a series of paintings characterized by intense colors and kaleidoscopic abstract shapes, explores the same themes of equilibrium and metamorphosis as her sculpture practice. Kim brought sculptural techniques of addition and reduction to these works, using a knife to apply and scrape off paint.

Coming from post-war Korea, Kim was invigorated by her time in Argentina. “The main reason that I was so strongly attracted to the primal vitality I felt in Argentina was because of my own experiences of witnessing the sufferings and deaths from the wars,” she explained. Later, in 2008, she established the Museo Kim Yun Shin in Buenos Aires, realizing her long-held dream of creating a space to showcase the works she made in the country over roughly 20 years. The vibrance of this period of her career has pushed the artist to keep creating; even now, the octogenarian artist is still evolving.

Ahead of her upcoming shows, Kim has been “immersed in the idea of organically integrating sculpture and painting into one work,” she said. Included in her presentation at Kukje, Add Two Add One, Divide Two Divide One 2019-19 (2019), a sculpture that appears to sprout from the ground, reflects this approach. Its assembled wooden components are painted with arresting colors and designs, including a vine running down the whole sculpture. After decades of parallel exploration in both painting and sculpture, Kim is mixing and matching materials and techniques from both aspects of her practice.