In her solo exhibition Do Not and Cannot are Different at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Seulki Ki decided to not traditionally show her work on the walls. Instead she presents a massive spatial installation that controls the viewer’s path, movement and perspective through the space. Fences frame the pathway and control the viewers possibilities to enter her world of images. She attaches banners showing installation views of her photographic work to the fences of the kind often used to enclose and protect construction sites in public space. Previously installed in the same exhibition space they were shot by the artist and printed on large scale. The boundaries between the exhibition and the public space are blurred, a “before” and “after” the exhibition is no longer clear. Her installation refers to remnants of concerts that have not taken place and announcements of future events in public space but also to the process of reproduction in photography itselve. Studies of postures and hand signs meet images of different raw materials, exposing surfaces that appeal to the senses. In Do not and cannot are different, the artist plays with the momentary limitation of physical and psychological experiences.

In her artistic work, Ki explores social contexts, exclusions and relationships with an interest in body gestures, the perception of time and sensory processes. She often creates illusionary spaces that address the self or the other. In her cross-space installations, video works, photographs and artist books, she creates thematic overlaps, associative spaces and abstractions that enable new ways of seeing and dealing with things.

Seulki Ki was born in South Korea and currently lives and works in Berlin. She studied at Sangmyung University, South Korea, and holds an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Arts, University College London. Her recent solo exhibitions include Private Life, Space CAN, CAN Foundation, Seoul (2019), and Theater Near Me, DOOSAN Gallery, New York (2018). She has most recently been involved in the group exhibitions Connected Worlds, Gyeongnam Art Museum, Changwon (2021), Maginot-Line, Cosmo 40, Incheon (2020), A Future Without a Past, Migrant Bird Space, Berlin (2020), Never Ever Artifice Sloppy Museum, Seoul Museum of Art (2020), and Mapping the Future World, Transformer, Washington, D. C. (online). Seulki Ki is a grantee of the Arts Council Korea. www.kiseulki.com