Artworks of Kim Kyung-won are full of animals. She uses features of the animals that we believe, are familiar to us, but strange in some way. Spots of cows or cockscombs create bizarre forms in her artworks which can never be same despite a thousand times of repeated trials. Spots get tangled each other or cockscombs attach to one another to produce eccentric gestalt, which will make them look different depending on a viewer’s mental state. Besides, these are connected to one another like Rhyzome in each of the artworks to create freer shapes hard to be characterized. The rhythmical pattern of animals with a bright background color is cheerful. This is not the pattern by a part of the whole like cut of meat, but the pattern created by the whole itself. The tremendous labor that would have been given to her artworks is simply one aspect of her paintings. What matters in her works of art is not a trick, but a density and intensity. The meaning shown by density and intensity is as strong as that of a particular material. 

The artist transforms the repetition of daily life or work-life through her artworks. The repetition in art is different. It is a repetition like labor, but it returns to a different point. What matters is the fantasy in reality or the reality in a fantasy world. Repetitions in reality and unnecessary games are simply worthless. A series of months’ worth of paintings started with her fondness of dairy products. Artists usually draw what they like, and even if this is not the case, they get to like it after drawing. This is because they can gain a deep understanding of the object while working on their art pieces. Thousands of cows and chickens are arranged in one way or another to lead various epic stories. Design-wise, each of the animals creates spectacle of forming the world by meeting and parting like atoms. Cows and chickens in her exhibition see only one direction, which is the result of mass breeding. In these modern times when development means increased productivity, the single-directional arrangement itself has a satirical message. Repetitive animals in her works reflect the mass production like goods, rather than individuals. Lives and the public caught in the trap of mass production/consumption have similar fate. While scientific technology seeks for accurate reemergence (reproduction), art is fundamentally different type of repetition. Works of an artist living in the age of an information revolution in the 21st century include many technical repetitions. However, manual paintings can’t be reproduced by the technical repetition no matter how precise it is. Kim Kyung-won’s works show her own repetition differentiated from that inherent in the digital culture or the production-for-production principle and has healing meaning. In the works putting thousands of chickens or cows in one art piece, every single one of them contains the artist’s wish. Chickens and cows chosen by the artist are combined in a form of word to create several contexts and deliver a message. This is a methodology of overlapping shapes to create another shape.

Animals in artworks are lower elements of a larger form just like atoms making the world. The single-directional thinking has been common in modern times. But, from the cyclical world view based on more common cycle of nature, life and death follow one after another. If animals are a symbol of mechanical repetition, namely, death, in a production-oriented society focusing on short term benefits, humans follow the same fate. Biotechnology is the expansion of modernism that regards animals as machines, and humans are also not free from this. Ironically, before long, modern thinking distinguishing humans from animals is supposed to consider them equal. It is the same in the sense that it is a means to an end. Kim Kyung-won, against this violent one-direction, tries to sublimate a means into an end. Kim Kyung-won’s works in her first solo exhibition start simply, but embraces criticism of civilization and will be expanded with increasing amplitude.

– Lee Sun-young (art critic)