DOOSAN Gallery is pleased to present Choice Specimen, which will be on view from July 16, 2014 to August 23, 2014. Choice Specimen, the solo exhibition of Na Kim (winner of the 2013 4th DOOSAN Artist Award), reconstructs the exhibition space and viewing environment through the eyes of a designer. This exhibition began with the question of whether the function of an exhibition space that holds artworks can become an artwork in itself. Graphic designer Na Kim calls forth the visual language that she is well-acquainted with?promotional media affixed to the outside walls of galleries, signboards, and so on? into the unfamiliar space of an exhibition.   

The exhibition’s organization begins with objects and spatial structures that the artist selected from those that viewers encounter in the gallery building’s underground parking lot, upon emerging from the building’s entrance, and upon entering the exhibition space. The subway exit or underground parking lot in the gallery building, the building’s front entrance, the exhibition promotional materials affixed to the gallery’s exterior, and the gallery’s interior reception and archival spaces all become specimens that the artist has selected, and the artist integrates them into a visual language that she brings from her everyday life. Thus, viewers come to re-experience?since they are reproduced in the gallery space?the visual images and spaces that they experienced prior to entering the gallery to view the exhibition. This touches on the artist’s quest to upend the existing order of visual language and create her own new rules, all by utilizing design. Further building on those actions, this exhibition takes note of the new visual order that the artist creates, by means of disparate fissures and collisions, in both the exterior and interior of the exhibition space. 

Na Kim (b. 1979)) received her B.S. in Industrial Design from KAIST, Korea, received her M.F.A. in Visual Communication Design from Hongik University, and completed her master’s course at Werkplaats Typografie in the Netherlands. She has held solo exhibitions at Gallery Factory (2011, Seoul, Korea) and BMH (2006, Seoul, Korea). Kim has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (2013, Gwacheon, Korea), V&A Museum (2013, London, UK), Culture Station Seoul 284 (2012, Seoul, Korea), MoMA (2012, New York, New York, USA), Triennale di Milano Design Museum (2011, Milano, Italy), and PAKT (2010, Amsterdam, Netherland). Kim also has worked as a curator in international events that include the Festival of Chaumont (2013, Chaumont, France), Typojanchi (2013, Seoul, Korea), and Brno Biennial (2012, Brno, Czech Republic).