Dae Hong Kim’s work makes use of a great number of media and materials and thus, tongue in cheek, avoids any form of categorization. A common factor in all his works is a sense of the surreal about them, sometimes joined by a rather black sense of humour. They often operate in a border zone between fun and sadness.
Kim is always designing new “unkind storybooks” whose protagonists are drawn in the style of comic characters. Using ordinary plastic bags, Kim constructs small robots reminiscent of animals, which move about the floor resembling scurrilous and half-finished beings, or creatures from a science-fiction film.
In Künstlerhaus Bethanien he uses the exhibition space as a minimalist White Cube where the visitor repeatedly discovers unobtrusive, almost invisible small objects and robot sculptures as well as a video/ sound work: here, he attracts the visitor’s attention with the help of a ‘White Cube in the White Cube’. At the centre of the space he has placed a white box, with a transparent side offering a view of a kind of illuminated stage inside. An apparently grotesque choreography is playing out on this – inspired, or so it seems, by both science-fiction film scripts and Japanese Butoh dance.

Dae Hong Kim is currently receiving a grant from Busan Cultural Foundation and is a guest at Künstlerhaus Bethanien.