Table monsters invade The New Gallery at Austin Peay
(Posted Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2021)
They hide under beds, lurk among trees, swim at the bottom of lakes, peek up at us through sewer grates. When considering a monster, the initial question concerns where they are rather than what they are. Their environments contain and ensconce them. A monster’s setting is their outermost layer of skin. There is no Big Foot without a forest, no ghosts without their buildings. In The New Gallery’s newest exhibition, Table Monsters, Wansoo Kim’s creatures live under their carapaces of tables.
The New Gallery, with support from The Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts and the Department of Art + Design, is pleased to present Wansoo Kim: Table Monsters to continue an engaging 2021-22 exhibition season.
Kim is a sculptural ceramicist born and raised in South Korea where he received his BFA in Ceramics from Seoul National University of Science and Technology. He earned an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2018. Since moving to the United States in 2013, he has shown his works regularly in national and international exhibitions. He is an assistant professor of ceramics at Austin Peay State University.
“It is always exciting to be able to exhibit one of our own,” states Michael Dickins, director of The New Gallery. “I offer a solo exhibition to our new Art + Design faculty during the third year of their professorship. This gives the students, colleagues and community a chance to see the faculty member’s newest creative research. Kim’s work also brings The New Gallery its first exhibition that has focused solely on ceramic works, and all of these works were produced on campus in the ceramics studio.”
According to arts writer, Veronica Kavass, “In Kim’s practice, there is an active shifting around of how the past correlates to the present. Perhaps when he started his development as an artist in Seoul, he felt boxed into a tradition which had been revived due to being estranged during Japanese colonial rule (several decades before his time). In his initial training in ceramics, he felt restricted by historical convention, but eventually found a way to simultaneously celebrate and question his cultural past. Because sometimes (often) there is a gulf between honoring tradition and giving an object meaning. Some artists straddle this gulf but when it becomes too wide, invention and imagination have to come into play. And in Kim’s case: monsters have to come into play. Even if they don’t know what exactly they are going to do with the tables at the end of the day.”
The exhibit is open and runs through October at The New Gallery, located in the Art + Design building on the campus of Austin Peay State University. The artist will be present on Oct. 7 in The New Gallery from noon-1:30 p.m. and will be giving a brief gallery talk beginning12:15 p.m. in The New Gallery. Kim will also be giving a public lecture on his work, Oct. 7 at 6 p.m. in Room 106A/B of the Sundquist Science Complex. The public lecture is in person, but will also be livestreamed, courtesy of CECA. Registration for the live-streaming event can be found here: www.bit.ly/wansookim.
All events are free and open to the public.
A virtual tour of the exhibition can be found at: www.apsu.edu/art-design/thenewgallery.
For more on Kim and his work, visit www.wansookim.com.
Hours for The New Gallery are Monday- Friday, 9 a.m.- 4 p.m., closed on weekends and holidays, and follow the University’s academic calendar. The New Gallery will be open during Clarksville’s First Thursday Art Walk, Oct. 7, from 5-7:30 p.m. For more information on this exhibition, which is free and open to the public, contact Dickins at dickinsm@apsu.edu.
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