Suki Kim, President of Hyunsil Publishing

DOOSAN Curator Workshop commenced with its first seminar by Suki Kim, the president of Hyunsil Publishing on May 10th, 2012. The three workshop participants took a close look at the overall history of publication of Hyunsil Publishing. In particular, the participants requested case studies of publications produced through the union of visual art and publishing, and sought to hear from the perspective of a professional publisher, his opinions on the absence of the language of criticism in the field of visual arts today.

1) The various cases of Hyunsil Publishing related to visual arts
Hyunsil Publishing is equipped with the passionate yearning for criticism and deconstruction on the institutionalization of art, as well as the consciousness to re-interpret and establish the concept of art.

Through various case studies of publication, this workshop emphasized the necessity of ‘approaching the artist or art work through various contexts’, and introduced past projects that explored the issues of culture, art and publishing as a new form.

2) The language of criticism in the field of visual art
The seminar shared ideas on the ‘Absence of Critical Language’, a subject requested by the participants. The debate centered on the opinion which demanded that there is a need for visual art to share the critical language and mentality of other fields and to personalize it. Here, Kim also noted that book is the most important and useful medium in personalizing the critical language and mentality of other fields. In this context, it became evident that Hyunsil Publishing has been performing a pivotal role in contemporary visual art. Kim went on further to point out that critics are handling their own roles in idleness, and that the insufficient postulation of curators today on the ‘curatorial subject’ hinders the proposition of clear and definite perspective in both exhibition and text. The seminar concluded with an emphasis on the solution for such absence of awareness on the subject: the curator and the critic must be equipped with insight in humanities, which must be preceded by intellectual discipline.

Kim has served as the director of Galleria Art Gallery and in the panel for Gwangju Biennale. Kim has supervised the 2nd Gwangju Biennale symposium and its catalogue, as well as having planned, edited or produced the Busan Biennale Guidebook in 2006, and the catalogue for the opening exhibition of Seoul Art Center Design Museum, the opening exhibition of Nam June Paik Art Center, and the
catalogue for the Gwangju Biennale in 2010.

Kim is currently the president of Hyunsil Publishing, as well as a lecturer of visual culture and writing courses at Korea National University of Arts and Hongik University.
 
Kim has co-written The Basic Concept of Contemporary Art, Response to Cultural Changes and Criticism in Art, Sexuality: Beyond the Nightmares of Pleasure, Design of Korea: Chronicles of Visual Culture, and translated in cooperation Minimalism, Modernism, Postmodernism, and Realism, and History of Contemporary Art.