Artist Kim Yun-shin carves out her 'moment' with Hoam retrospective

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Artist Kim Yun-shin carves out her 'moment' with Hoam retrospective

Published: 17 Mar. 2026, 07:00

LEE JIAN
[email protected]

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

[INTERVIEW]

Kim Yun-shin poses for a photo with her sculptures displayed at her ongoing retrospective "Two Be One" at Hoam Museum of Art in Yongin, Gyeonggi, on March 13. [PARK SANG-MOON]

YONGIN, Gyeonggi — At 91 years old, Kim Yun-shin is receiving a level of recognition in Korea that eluded her for decades.

After spending 40 years carving wood in Argentina, largely outside the spotlight of the Korean art world, the pioneering sculptor is now the subject of her first full retrospective at the Hoam Museum of Art, running through June 28.

“Seeing so many of my works here, all at once for the first time, I feel that they are completely me," she told the Korea JoongAng Daily in an interview at the museum in Yongin, Gyeonggi, on Friday. “I see my journey of searching for myself."

Kim Yun-shin's wooden sculptures are displayed at her retrospective "Two Be One" set to run through June 28 at the Hoam Museum of Art in Yongin, Gyeonggi. [HOAM MUSEUM OF ART]

Kim belongs to the generation of artists who emerged in postwar Korea, enrolling in Hongik University’s Department of Sculpture in 1955. Despite her evident talent, she remained largely unknown to the public for decades, especially compared to contemporaries like Park Seo-bo, Lee Ufan and Kim Tschang-yeul, as she moved to Argentina in the 1980s in search of the best materials for her art and more opportunities to show her work, which was scant for a female sculptor in the 1970s and 1980s. She would continue living and working there for the next 40 years. Her foray into the public eye came in 2023, when she was invited by the Nam-Seoul Museum of Art for a solo exhibition, leading to her participation in the Venice Biennale in 2024.

Now, her retrospective at Hoam Museum of Art features approximately 170 works — including her iconic wood sculptures as well as lithographs, rock works and paintings — spanning some 70 years of the artist’s career.

They are the selected batch from over a thousand more pieces, according to Hoam’s curator, Tae Hyun-seon. “Kim Yun-shin has worked as if breathing — as though art were the way to prove that she has lived,” Tae said. “This exhibition introduces an artist who has lived her entire life as one with art, guided by pure passion and conviction.”

The highlight of the show is “Add Two Add One, Divide Two Divide One” (1987–88), a 181-centimeter-tall (71-inch-tall) vertical sculpture carved from Argentine palo santo wood and now part of the collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. It is being publicly displayed in her homeland for the first time.

Kim Yum-shin poses with her artwork, “Add Two Add One, Divide Two Divide One” (1987–88) [HOAM MUSEUM OF ART]

“Add Two Add One, Divide Two Divide One,” shortened to “Two Be One,” is also the title of the retrospective, alluding to the fusion of artist and material to give birth to yet another entity, a work of art. It reflects Kim’s longstanding working method since the 1960s, where she has worked without croquis, models or preliminary plans. Instead, she waits for the material to speak first.

“I place the wood there and look at it for a long time,” she said, “until the wood and I can become one, and then I simply follow wherever the saw moves.

“If I draw everything beforehand, or plan the composition in advance, the moment has already passed. Life exists in this very instant. Everything must be completed within this moment."

“Moment” is the artist’s favorite word.

“If you look from outside the universe, all matter exists in this very moment. So things are born in this moment, and they die in this moment,” she explains, in other words, stating that to her, time is not so much a long continuous flow, but rather a series of events that are constantly being created and disappearing in each moment.

“So, when that moment comes, I lift the saw and begin, and that is when the form begins to appear. I see the space here, and then I think about how the next space should follow,” she said.

A photo taken from Kim Yun-shin's workshop in Paju, Gyeonggi on Feb. 19 [JOONGANG ILBO]

Her tool of choice is a chainsaw, which she began using to cut through the extremely dense hardwoods she encountered in Argentina — a method that also suited her famously impatient temperament. Over the years, the image of the white-haired artist wielding a large chainsaw has become something of an icon: a grandmotherly figure carving through thick logs with fierce determination.

“My driving force is thought and spirit,” Kim said. “Without that, the work becomes too difficult, physically and mentally. I wouldn’t have come this far. If you cannot overcome that, you cannot continue.”

"Presentiment" (1967), a lithography work by Kim Yun-shin [HOAM MUSEUM OF ART]

That strength, however, isn’t all congenital. The artist is a living witness to Korea’s tumultuous modern history, having lived through Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule and the Korean War (1950-53).

Born in Wonsan, now part of North Korea, Kim is the youngest of six children born in 1935. When World War II ended and Korea was liberated, Kim was 10 years old and staying in China with her father, who practiced traditional Korean medicine there.

When Korea regained independence, her father began closing his medical practice to return home. Kim was sent ahead alone to Korea with another Korean family — a journey she recalls as harrowing for a young child.

“We walked endlessly and had nothing to eat,” she said. “Eventually, we arrived at the train station in [the North Korean city of] Chongjin. I don’t know if I collapsed on the station floor or if I fell asleep. My memory is completely dark. Someone shook me awake, and that was when I opened my eyes.”

Kim Yun-shin speaks to the Korea JoongAng Daily during an interview at the Hoam Museum of Art in Yongin, Gyeonggi, on March 13, 2025. [PARK SANG-MOON]

Just two years later, the Korean War broke out. “As bullets flew everywhere and the streets of Seoul turned into a sea of blood, I kept thinking: I must live,” she said. “The feeling that I must keep working, that I must survive on my own, has always lived powerfully in me.”

That resilience is embodied in her towering, wooden sculptures. “They represent the artist’s passion for creation, her deep spiritual faith, and a lifelong pledge to live as an artist,” said curator Tae.

The retrospective traces the evolution of these abstract forms — from early totemic shapes to increasingly complex sculptural bodies.

“When I work, I don’t just work — I think of it as a kind of prayer,” Kim said. “My hardships, and the wishes I want to reach the heavens — I am always praying as I work.”

The retrospective also features onyx works she experimented with in Brazil and Mexico in the late 1980s and early 2000s, as well as lithographs from the 1960s and vibrant paintings from the 2000s.

Her most recent series consists of painted wooden sculptures — a direction that emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic, when Kim was unable to leave her home or obtain new materials. Instead, she began painting leftover wood fragments from construction sites and demolished buildings, inspired by a chance encounter with the Indigenous Mapuche people living in the Patagonia region several years back, whose bodies were fully painted.

Kim says what she loved most about painting the pieces was the sense of nostalgia it evoked. “I used to play like that when I was a child,” she said.

“I always thought that nature was my friend. I didn’t have friends, so trees, flowers, grass, soil, everything was my friend. Because they couldn’t speak, I would become them, and they would become me. That was how we spoke. On rainy days, drops would fall from the branches of the peach tree in our yard — drip, drip — forming round droplets like little pieces of glass. I would watch them and give them names. ‘Will you make it all the way?’ I would ask them. ‘Or will one of you disappear along the way?’”

This is how Kim sees the world even today — and how she connects with her materials. Nature is her friend. The trees are her companions. In many ways, she sees herself as part of nature.

″Add Two Add One Divide Two Divide One″ (2013-16) [HOAM MUSEUM OF ART]

Nature was also what led her to leave her relatively stable, mid-career life in Korea and relocate to Argentina in 1984, a place she describes as one where “the sky and the land feel like one long horizontal line.”

She recalls falling in love with the country the moment she looked down at it from the airplane, en route to visit her nephew who lived there. “The land is vast and open, the sunlight is strong, and life moves at a slower pace,” she said.

Most importantly, there were the trees — completely “opposite” from those she had worked with in Korea.

“The wood in Argentina is very hard, and the grain is very unusual. Some trees do not have grain that runs in one straight direction — it goes one way and then overlaps again,” Kim said. “The woods of algarrobo and palo santo are like that. If you place the saw the wrong way, it can kick back. Korean wood grows much more softly.”

She believes the difference lies in the climate. “There, the sun is strong, and although there are different seasons, time seems to pass more generously. The trees receive sunlight, and when rain is needed, it comes. Everything grows abundantly,” she said. “For me, that was something I truly loved.”

So, Kim gave up a professorship at Sangmyung University and moved to Argentina, where she would live for the next 40 years. She never married and spent nearly every day working. When she was not in the studio, she tended to her garden and her animals — 13 cats, dogs “too many to count” and a few turtles. She said she never felt lonely.

“Wherever I go in the world, the place where I work is my home,” she said. “Because I think that way, I don’t really feel something like loneliness. Even if I cannot speak the language, it doesn’t matter to me. For me, only my work matters. That is what keeps me alive.”

"Song of My Soul 2013–50" (2013) [HOAM MUSEUM OF ART]

Argentina, she said, was a place where she could search for herself without words.

“If I were in Korea, I would meet many people. And then when would I have time to make my work?” she said. “My time is very short, especially now that I am older. I need to make more works. But there, people do not visit very often. Only those who are truly necessary come. Because of that, I was able to devote myself completely to my work.”

Since 2024, she has left that life behind and returned to Korea, following numerous invitations from museums and galleries to show her work.

“Being able to speak about the past, and about the process of the past 40 years of my art — that such an opportunity has come to me is something very significant and completely unimaginable,” she said. “It feels like something beyond what a person can make happen on their own. I think perhaps heaven has granted me this opportunity.”

She added, “My life has been a difficult one. But if younger artists, or those who wish to study my work, could look at it and receive some good influence from it, that would make me happy.”

BY LEE JIAN [[email protected]]