In Sook Kim: Saturday Night

“In a process of self-reflection, the depths of the abyss are plumbed—there, where lust, pain, ecstasy, and asceticism flow into emotional transcendence.” Jean Christophe Ammann, on In Sook Kim

Time and again, we read shocking newspaper reports about people who have lain dead in their homes for months, or even years, without any of their neighbors taking notice of them. These events are symptomatic of the increasing isolation of human beings—and not just senior citizens—in our society. In large cities, the risk of falling into complete anonymity is particularly acute.

In her works, In Sook Kim (*1969 in Pusan, South Korea) examines how people confront the threat of isolation. Her elaborate, psychologically persuasive settings show how we use television, computers, sex, alcohol, psychotropics, or illegal drugs in our futile attempts to fill the agonizing void, to drown out the terrible silence and painful awareness of our loneliness. Kim’s grandiose work, Saturday Night, condenses all of these escapes into one image; the illuminated windows of a high-rise provide an unobstructed view into the abyss of human existence.