By Maddie Yerant and Brielle Saggese
Toronto-based artist Christine Kim kicked off a display of her work at the Indiana Design Center’s Grand Hall at a reception June 11.
“This is my first time in Indiana, and I’m really excited to meet a new set of connections and get that exposure in the States,” Kim said. “I’m kind of super curious where this will take me.”
Curiosity breeds invention for Kim, some of whose recent work started as nothing more than a happy accident.
“I was doing some paper cutting,” Kim said. “There was one drawing that went horribly, and I messed up and cut the figure out, and the figure – she was a girl – she was sitting on top of all these paper cuts and water color paintings in my studio, and I thought that was really interesting,” Kim said.
From there, Kim said she started to layer the pieces and realized the figure cast a shadow. She then decided to put the pieces in a shadow box, effectively creating a collage of different pieces and types of art.
“It’s kind of a fun process, this whole collage thing, because I actually accumulate different ingredients, so I do lots of drawings first, and then water color paintings, and cut papers, and it’s just a matter of pulling from each little pile and figuring it out,” Kim said.
The display includes paper collages, paper installations and paper sculptures, some of which play with the light in the Grand Hall space, such as her immersive installation “Confessions.”
Kim said she hopes viewers take note of the interplay between that light and shadow as well as a quietness about her work.
“I kind of want (audiences) to appreciate the quiet moments I have drawn out for the collages, and to enjoy the play of light and shadow, especially for the sculpture pieces,” Kim said. “It’s really beautiful when the natural light hits it, because it’s layers and layers of shadow that build up.”
None of it, she said, would have happened if it weren’t for that first mistake in the studio.
“It’s been about five, six years now,” Kim said. “I guess it just took off on its own. It was a really great discovery, even if it was a mistake.”
Kim’s work will be displayed in the Design Center through July.
