We’re in the habit of talking about site-specific installations, but time-specific would be a more appropriate tag for Eun Hyung Kim’s new exhibition at Gallery 400. The artist’s ever-increasing catalog of images is equally journalistic, confessional, and allegorical: a man urinates on his own face (decapitated, in the toilet), a person grows from a tree, a brain swells with Marsden-esque linework, a man drowns in his own water-filled chest, a makeshift machine dislocates a man’s arms and legs. In each short sadistic narrative there is no conclusion, only a video loop.
Kim’s imagery is both cryptic and accessible—perhaps uncomfortably so. This dynamic is the strength of Kim’s multimedia installation, titled “Designing Eros.” Eros, from the Greco-Roman pantheon, is sexual desire, and literally translates as madness from the gods. Twentieth-century psychoanalytic theory paired expressions of Eros with Thanatos, or the death drive. Here, Kim is not, assuredly, presenting us with the expression of the maddened artist, but reminds us that our viewing habits thrive—and are threatened by—pleasure. (Andrew Blackley)
Through June 12 at Gallery 400, 400 S. Peoria
Related Stories
Lost in Translation: A Review of Crip* at Gallery 400 The strongest works in the exhibition succinctly express the ways the artist relates to their own body while calling out how the artist’s body and body of work has been perceived or coded against norms or ideals.
Repurposing AI: A Review of Stephanie Dinkins at Stamps Gallery While this show is timely for everyone, I consider its setting within a university art gallery and emerging tech hub like the city of Ann Arbor a subversive provocation which Dinkins invites the greater public—including members of the university community—to consider our own positionality to AI and technology.
In this review, Eun Hyung Kim’s exhibition title was mistakenly written as “Designing Eros,” rather than its correct title “Designing Egos.” While this error is not entirely invalidating of the report stemming from the exhibition and speaking with the artist after his lecture April 29th, it is surely inaccurate and has done a level of disservice to the the intentions of the exhibition. Designing Egos is a hugely rich experience, and this mistake perhaps can serve as an illustration to the multitudes of potentials in Kim’s work. I would certainly continue to recommend visiting this exhibition, and would like to… Read more »
RECOMMENDED
In this review, Eun Hyung Kim’s exhibition title was mistakenly written as “Designing Eros,” rather than its correct title “Designing Egos.” While this error is not entirely invalidating of the report stemming from the exhibition and speaking with the artist after his lecture April 29th, it is surely inaccurate and has done a level of disservice to the the intentions of the exhibition. Designing Egos is a hugely rich experience, and this mistake perhaps can serve as an illustration to the multitudes of potentials in Kim’s work. I would certainly continue to recommend visiting this exhibition, and would like to… Read more »