Mary Song & Kiwoun Shin. Reality Test, 2011

Raumars Artist-in-Residence Program hosts a Korean curator Mary Song, who has curated an exhibition Distance Making & Reducing by 7 multinational artists at Gallery 3H+K in Pori. Mary Song has developed this theme through her research on different culture, different material, different ideologies, as well as physical distance which human being creates.

The exhibition includes Kiwoun Shin’s videos from the series Grinding, which creates the distance from the capitalist objects, yet it also gives the sublime of the object with the very classical music sometimes. In the video Reality Test, Shin’s time goes by in a different dimension. This can be recognized by the ordinary life, which we live in such a quick speed, but this work leads people to think about the every minute we spend for our lives.

Kiwoun Shin has worked and resided at the National Studio Changdong in Korea. He has studied in Korea and in London, where he lives currently. Kiwoun Shin also participates and Design Museum exhibition titled Korean Design in Helsinki this spring.

Artist Statement from Kiwoun Shin: “From my first exhibition at 2001, I tried variety expression and new technology. My sculpture study, commercial film studio experience, and music performance experience in Korean army band are the most essence backgrounds of my works such as grinding machine works, stop-motion Animation and music performance. My works got many art exhibition and prizes in Korea and international. After 2007, when I move in London, I began to concentrate video media art.

Continuously, I am interesting visual analysis of the ‘existence’; my point began from ‘grinding’ and moved to ‘evaporating’. These are shown long time footages what disappearance processed from an object to dust. Now ‘Crashing’ is my new subject. Recently, my issue is when and how we have a sense of the ‘real’, how this ‘reality’ exists and how we believe the ‘truth’. These questions begin with my ideas from car crash test videos to the real accident. So, what is difference between the scenes of car crush test and ‘Real’ car crush as accident? These questions are realized by comparing objects and human. Moreover, I re-constructed a few unusual video tests.“