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<\/p>\n\n\tKim Yun Shin\u2019s carefully carved wood and stone sculptures don\u2019t look like they were made by someone using a chainsaw. It\u2019s an unusual tool for a 90-year-old artist, but it helps that that Kim started using it in 1984 and that she has the energy of someone much younger. The Korean artist spends hours making her art: monochrome lithographs composed of intersecting shapes; paintings made of hundreds of lines; sculptures that take the form of hand-carved pieces of wood and stone.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWhen inspiration strikes, I immerse myself completely, picking up the chainsaw and finishing the piece in a single day,\u201d she wrote to ARTnews. \u201cI work instinctively, without pre-planning, following my intuitive guidance. Even when using sandpaper, I avoid getting the help from assistants, as the cut surface of the wood changes with each touch, and I want my hands to be the only ones involved until the end.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n\tThis energy is something Kim has developed over seven decades\u2014and it has been especially helpful to her over the last two years. After a retrospective at the Nam-Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) in 2023 drew the attention of curators and gallerists, Kim gained representation with Lehmann Maupin and Kukje Gallery.<\/a> Exhibitions in Seoul, London, and New York have followed, as has an appearance in the 2024 Venice Biennale<\/a>.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tKim Yun Shin:\u00a0Divide Two Divide One opened at Lehmann Maupin<\/a> New York on April 3, 2025. \n\tGallerists and curators described Kim as a pioneering female artist whose body of work is informed by living, learning, and working in multiple cities.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cHer work is a lot about connecting man, nature and the cosmos, thinking about that kind of structure,\u201d Kyung An, the Guggenheim Museum\u2019s Asian art initiative curator and head of its global exhibitions initiative, told ARTnews. \u201cI was really struck by this bold approach to sculpture that we hadn\u2019t seen before.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tLehmann Maupin cofounder Rachel Lehmann told ARTnews, \u201cIt can\u2019t get more real than somebody working for 70 years and nobody giving you attention, right? You can\u2019t fake it.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThat creative journey started with Kim being born in Wonsan, in present-day North Korea. Shortly after the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, Kim and her mother were able to flee to South Korea. \n\tDuring this period, Kim created lithographs on traditional Korean paper using ink, delicate lines, geometric shapes, and the spiral shape of the taegeuk, the Korean symbol for the dual forces of nature that is visually similar to the Chinese yin and yang.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tKim Yun Shin, Premonition, 1967. Courtesy of the Nam-Seoul Museum of Art.<\/p>\n \n\tAfter five years in the French capital, she moved back to Seoul and taught sculpture at Seoul\u2019s Sangmyung University until 1983. During this time, she also started the Korean Sculptress Society, which is still active today. The next year, Kim decided to move to Buenos Aires after an initial visit to see a nephew. She lived and worked there until 2022, the year she moved to Paju, a city located about an hour outside Seoul. Between the late 1980s and early 2000s, Kim also spent time in Mexico and Brazil. In 2008, she founded a namesake museum in Buenos Aires, the first one in the world to be focused on Korean immigrant art. She now splits her time between two studios in Buenos Aires and Seoul.<\/p>\n \n\tHer transcontinental career shaped her work, freeing her from artistic trends in Korea. \u201cMost artists of her generation in Korea had to be at one stage or another contemplating and wrestling with the notion of \u2018Western\u2019 modernism,\u201d Eunah Park, director of Kukje Gallery in Seoul, said in an email to ARTnews. \u201cBut because Kim physically uprooted herself and planted herself in a completely new land, she was completely free to absorb what she wished. Her independence is what defines her.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tKim described her artistic career as \u201ca continuous journey of exploration, expansion, and development across various media, including sculpture, printmaking, and painting.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cUltimately,\u201d she said, \u201cthe diverse landscapes, inspirations, and cultures I encountered in different countries became a vital energy that shaped my artistic journey.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tKim Yun Shin in Buenos Aires, 1996. Courtesy of Lehmann Maupin.<\/p>\n \n\tStarting in the mid-1980s, Kim drew her inspiration from the natural materials she encountered in Argentina and Mexico City, where she saw an exhibit at the Palacio de Bellas Artes featuring works created in onyx in 1988. \u201cThey guided me toward an exploration of the principles and order inherent in nature, which I pursued in my \u2018Add Two Add One Divide Two Divide One\u2019 series,\u201d she told ARTnews. The series attests to Kim\u2019s interests in philosophy and architecture, specifically the \u201cGyeolgu-beop\u201d technique seen in the carefully carved slots of traditional Korean homes. The wooden sculptures also resemble mountain ranges, whale tails, sprouting plants, canyon ridges, and more.<\/p>\n \n\tWhile the decades in Argentina were inspiring for Kim, the first 15 years were also a struggle. There were few other Koreans there, and the artist did not know how to speak Spanish. Plus, maneuvering local materials was no easy task.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cFor the first 15 years, it was a battle between myself and the massive, heavy wood,\u201d Kim said. \u201cAlone in my workshop, I used levers and pulleys to move and carve the materials, immersing myself entirely in my work. Though it was a difficult time, I consider it a meeting with God, a time of prayer. Even now, I see my artistic work as a moment where the primal forces of nature, the divine, and my own soul become one.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAt the same time, she was also producing colorful paintings that make use of a stamping technique associated with printmaking. Her abstractions frequently feature intersecting planes composed of gridded lines and stripes, and they look a bit like the organic forms the artist had already explored in wood, steel, and stone. She has continued painting\u2014and sometimes even paints her sculptures, which she said reflects \u201cthe reciprocal influence of painting on my sculptural work.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tKim Yun Shin, Song of My Soul 2011-No.51, 2011. Courtesy the artist, Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul, and London; and Kukje Gallery, Seoul and Busan.<\/p>\n \n\tLehmann saw Kim\u2019s survey exhibition at SeMA in 2023, and then visited the artist\u2019s Paju studio. \u201cWe completely fell in love with her. She was so vivid and so committed, and working at such an old age,\u201d she told ARTnews. The artist \u201chad such a young spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tPark was also \u201cblown away\u201d by Kim\u2019s solo retrospective at SeMA, which had the highest average daily visitor count among all exhibitions held at the museum. \u201cThe \u2018explosiveness\u2019 in her vibrant vocabulary and the grammar of sculpture was something different from what I had seen in the works of her generation,\u201d Park told ARTnews.<\/p>\n \n\tDespite all this praise, Kim remains modest to a fault. She even described nearly missing out on the opportunity to appear in curator Adriano Pedrosa\u2019s Venice Biennale<\/a> last year.<\/p>\n \n\tShe first received the news she would be included while participating in an artist residency program in Yanggu, a small town near the Demilitarized Zone. Pedrosa called her in the early hours. \u201cI was so disoriented that I couldn\u2019t fully grasp what was happening,\u201d Kim said. \u201cIt turned out that he had attempted to contact the studio several times via email a few months earlier, but I had missed them. I was in disbelief and couldn\u2019t think clearly for a while. Eventually, I offered a prayer of gratitude.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tKim Yun Shin\u2019s sculptures at the Venice Biennale\u2019s Central Pavilion in 2024. Courtesy the artist, Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul, and London; and Kukje Gallery, Seoul and Busan. Photo: Andrea Rossetti.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAndrea Rossetti<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/KYS-LMG-New-York-2025-install-05.jpg\")
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Courtesy the artist, Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul, and London; and Kukje Gallery<\/a>, Seoul and Busan. Photo by Studio Kukla.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Soon after getting her BFA in sculpture from Hongik University in Seoul in 1959, Kim decided to move to Paris to study sculpture and lithography at the \u00c9cole Nationale Sup\u00e9rieure des Beaux-Arts in 1964.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/1.-%EC%98%88%EA%B0%90-1967-%ED%8C%90%ED%99%94%EC%A7%80%EC%97%90-%EC%84%9D%ED%8C%90%ED%99%94-63.3%C3%9745cm.jpg?w=400\")
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