If you have chosen – perhaps due to theoretical suspicions – not to imagine the fourth dimension before now, Shin il Kim still offers some insights into a more reserved, but equally challenging interim sphere. The artist, who was born in South Korea and lives in New York, actually works on the 2 1/2th dimension, using this term to refer to an oscillation between the second and third dimension that one might best call a transitional stage between drawing and three-dimensionality.
Kim produces this missing link between the dimensions by pressing colourless outlines in layers of paper and subsequently filming them on video. What emerges is a picture puzzle composed of the visible and the invisible, which is certainly suited to art-historical analysis. Inspired by the figurative drama in Raffael’s “Transfiguration of Christ”, Kim constructs models of the main figures of the painting in order to set them in motion, transpose them into the video medium, project them back onto paper, and finally to translate them into video loops that he then stages as a walk-in spatial installation. In this way, a critical stocktaking of belief and superstition, concept and authority emerges – almost as a side effect.
