Juree Kim: Time, Space, People, and Community Matter
Hyun jeung Kim
Whenever I encounter Juree Kim’s work, I find myself asking what sculpture is. A quick search for the definition of sculpture yields a description: “A branch of the visual arts that, in a narrow sense, refers to the act of carving, shaping, or otherwise working materials, as well as the resulting object. In a broader sense, it encompasses the act of manipulating a medium from the perspective of the sculpting subject, along with the materials that have been transformed through that process.”
Sculptor Juree Kim has consistently incorporated an engagement with the surrounding environment into their practice. Beginning with Hwigyeong_Evanescent Landscape, the artist has captured the moments of witnessing redevelopment and disappearance unfold firsthand within the city. Looking at Wet Matter (2020–present), in which massive masses of earth seem almost to breathe, I found myself confronted with a fundamental question about sculpture: How can a sculpture exist in a wet state? If, during the period in which this series was developed, Juree Kim explored the vitality inherent in earth and water, as well as the transient moments of nature, the works presented in the recent exhibition Matter Ridge seem to reveal an expanded perspective, one that seeks to engage with phenomena on a broader scale. As a result, I began to imagine the work as something that exceeds the dimension of sculpture, becoming a vast landscape situated somewhere between reality and imagination—a landscape into which I might physically enter. Why then, does Juree Kim choose to present reinterpreted forms of earth, water, and mountains within the white cube as though they were archaeological remains or traces of an ancient site? The Wet Matter series originated from the artist’s 2020 field research in the wetlands at the mouth of Amnok (Yalu) River in Dandong, China, a region bordering North Korea. There, the artist encountered wet matter itself—a landscape in which communities live and coexist across the river—and was drawn to the wetlands that form the foundation of that environment. Likewise, Hwigyeong_Evanescent Landscape (2009–present) steps from the artist’s direct experience of urban redevelopment in Hwigyeong-dong. The work recreates scenes of demolition through sculpture and, just before the exhibition, water is poured onto the installation so that the interaction of earth, water, and gravity makes the process of collapse visible. The monumental landscapes presented in Matter Ridge also began with an accidental observation made during the artist’s working process. Upon placing clay into a container of water, Juree Kim observed it dispersing and dissolving into the liquid. This experience became the starting point for the work. The artist has consistently developed a bold body of work that introduces changing environments and unfolding processes through the material of earth, revealing them in diverse yet sequential ways.
In addition, when I visited the artist’s studio, I heard stories about their work in the United Kingdom and India. Observations of heat and fire arising from the climates encountered in these different environments became an opportunity to further reflect on fire, both a natural element and a physical phenomenon that has long occupied their thinking. After returning to Korea, the artist gained firsthand experience firing a kiln, an experience that enabled them to connect the elements of earth, water, fire, and land that would later recur throughout their work. Impermanence, produced around the same period, was likewise developed while Juree Kim was staying on Daebudo as part of an artist residency program, and emerged through direct engagement with the island’s environment and ecology.
One passage from an interview with Juree Kim resonated with me particularly strongly. They state, “It is not a matter of liking or disliking, of right or wrong. It simply is. Just as people are said to come from earth and return to earth, I believe the message of my work is conveyed through processes that are temporary, changing, and never fixed in place. I seek to explore larger scales of time that emerge from the accumulation of fleeting moments, and to reflect them in my work. I foreground materiality because I believe in the power of elemental materials and the imagination they generate. Exploring the material metaphors and temporalities inherent in media such as water, earth, light, sound, and fire remains a continuing source of fascination for me.”
Perhaps, then, Juree Kim is a sculptor who gives form to the most uncontrived states of human beings and their environments, along with the invisible energies that flow between them. The spaces occupied by the artist’s sculptures become sites of quiet ritual, where viewers encounter the works and, through an exchange of breath and presence, undergo a subtle shift in perception. In doing so, they are led toward a stance of reverence and acceptance before the primordial force of matter itself. Even if such intentions were not meticulously planned from the outset, we may nevertheless find ourselves preparing for a kind of rite before the landscapes that unfold through Juree Kim’s sculptures. Much like Empedocles’ account of earth, air, fire, and water as the elemental origins to which all life ultimately returns, these works invite us into a state of profound emptiness—one that allows us to encounter those origins anew.
As Tim Ingold, author of Correspondences, observes, Lucretius’s Of the Nature of Things offers a way of thinking about how stillness can exist within movement. According to Ingold, perception is set in motion when falling matter deviates slightly from its straight path and triggers a chain of collisions. In other words, when an object falls through space under its own weight at a particular time and place, it swerves ever so slightly from a direct trajectory. Without this capacity to veer, all things might simply plunge into the abyss like falling raindrops. If no collisions occurred, if atoms never encountered one another, nature would be incapable of producing anything at all. Encountering Juree Kim’s work, we gradually and almost unconsciously begin to gauge the depth of that abyss. Might the “things” Lucretius speaks of be understood here as the natural elements that populate Juree Kim’s practice—earth and water, mountains, scent, and soil? In Ingold’s reading, the traces left behind by objects as they swerve and collide become the very substance of our lives and the ground upon which we dwell. The traces of countless struggles may take the form of mountain ranges torn apart by mining, lakes transformed into deserts, forests consumed by fire, skies thick with smog, or worlds fractured by conflict.
Here, we may begin to consider what it means for natural elements to acquire temporality. This differs from the idea of time as something that simply passes. Rather, temporality is the horizon through which existence becomes meaningful and intelligible. At the same time, sedimentation refers to the natural process by which earth, sand, gravel, organic remains, and other materials are transported and deposited through the action of water, wind, and glaciers. The temporality that can be found in Juree Kim’s sculptures lies in the overlap of multiple layers of time. As the artist constructs contemporary apartment blocks—emblems of today’s standardized living environments—from earth, the time spent conceiving and creating a work, the moment of its public display through exhibition, and the time experienced by viewers as they witness its transformation converge to generate new narratives. The temporality present in the artist’s work may also be understood as the accumulated trace of a long inquiry into the relationship between human time and natural time—an enduring concern throughout Juree Kim’s practice. On the outskirts of the city, redevelopment continues relentlessly even at this very moment. It operates according to a temporality that prioritizes productivity, efficiency, and the maximization of profit, a time that advances with accelerating speed and constant transformation. In contrast, natural time flows more slowly. It is a temporality that accommodates and responds to the lives that breathe upon the earth, as well as to the fundamental cycles and rhythms of nature itself. For this reason, it is difficult to reduce Juree Kim’s work to a single interpretive framework. Yet at the same time, its underlying concerns are remarkably clear. The artist’s thinking encompasses timescales that stretch across hundreds of millions of years, from the formation of the Earth to the emergence of humankind. It also embraces cyclical ecological rhythms shaped by the changing seasons, periods that unfold according to a pace fundamentally different from the time perceived and experienced by humans. Just as human activity has pushed the climate crisis toward catastrophe, natural time reveals the limits of our world through ecological destruction and resource depletion. I often find myself wondering how nature might perceive human time. As Juree Kim’s work continues to evolve, might we find reason to hope for a time of recovery by becoming more attuned to the differences between these temporalities in our everyday lives? It seems likely that Juree Kim’s future work will continue to invite reflection not only on temporality itself, but also on the vastly different timescales of the Earth and humanity, and on the forces that shape their relationship.
Finally, I find myself reflecting on the concept of matter, a word Juree Kim has used quite frequently as the title of exhibitions. The etymological roots of matter can be traced to the Latin mater, meaning “mother.” Just as a mother enables a new life to take shape, matter may be understood as that which allows materials to gather and assume form. When a form, an issue, or a concern takes hold at the center of one’s attention, it may be said to matter precisely because it has become significant and consequential. In this sense, the materials that constitute Juree Kim’s sculptures are both the source and the substance of life itself. Perhaps Juree Kim is continually using sculpture to speak metaphorically about the conditions and crises confronting both the natural world on which we depend and the communities in which we live. As someone who will continue to follow the concept of matter, a concept evident not only in the title of the artist’s recent solo exhibition Matter Ridge at CAN Foundation but also throughout the Wet Matter series, I find myself increasingly curious about where this practice may lead. Looking at the artist’s recent experiments in two-dimensional form, I sense a growing spiritual and contemplative energy taking root within the work. As this practice continues to move forward with quiet consistency, may its increasingly layered forms offer ever deeper occasions for reflecting on the nature of existence itself.
