In Xi’an Kim’s solo presentation at Art Brussels, reality is treated as contingent rather than fixed. Echoing principles from quantum physics, meaning emerges through observation, with perception actively shaping what is seen. In A Small Theatre Inside the Home, Kim renders objects from her life in South Korea—items inherited from her ancestors alongside things sourced from flea markets. These domestic artefacts, accumulated through use and proximity, are reassembled into tightly staged tableaux. The resulting mise-en-scènes articulate relationships between objects, memory, and presence, proposing reality as something continuously reconstructed through context and attention.
The exhibition unfolds as a quiet stage set within the domestic interior, where subtle emotional traces are embedded in objects—often overlooked or socially unspoken. Kim uses these objects to articulate her understanding of formative role figures in her life, particularly her mother, addressing affection alongside the more complex, unresolved emotions bound to that relationship. Rather than clarifying the motivations behind each work, Kim allows atmosphere and the internal logic between objects to operate autonomously. Still-life elements function as conduits for her psychological space, carrying memory and affect through restraint rather than narration.
This strategy becomes more apparent in Kim’s use of titles, which consistently follow a restrained, taxonomic structure—“Object + Number”—and deliberately refuse narrative or descriptive cues. By withholding semantic guidance, Kim avoids authorial framing and resists fixing meaning. Interpretation is instead deferred to the visual and spatial relationships between objects, materials, and surfaces. Emotional resonance is generated through proximity, scale, texture, and alignment, positioning the viewer as an active participant who constructs meaning through observation rather than instruction.
Kim’s practice is grounded in a highly controlled technical language in which surface and material operate as primary carriers of meaning. Her paintings combine sand, acrylic, and airbrush techniques to produce sealed, synthetic skins that feel smooth yet materially dense, suspended between tactility and artificiality. This approach draws from the visual logic of Chaekgeori painting of the Joseon Dynasty, a genre defined by the careful orchestration of objects within compressed, frontal space, where texture and spatial order were integral rather than decorative. Kim does not replicate this tradition but reworks its structural principles through contemporary materials and muted chromatic restraint, extending its object-based vocabulary into a present-day visual language shaped by abstraction, intimacy, and psychological proximity.
In A Small Theatre Inside the Home, Kim introduces playful shifts that unsettle the familiar without disrupting the composition’s formal restraint. Through her practice, she frames the canvas as an interior system in which meaning remains implicit, shaped by quiet tension, proximity, and sustained attention rather than explicit narrative.
