Yunchul Kim is an artist and electronic music composer whose work spans installations, drawings, sound, texts, and various other media. At the heart of his creative practice is the concept of ‘TransMatter,’ which explores the dynamic nature of matter in transition. By merging the boundaries of art and science, Kim weaves together elements from mathematics, technology, philosophy, and cosmology to craft immersive, otherworldly experiences.
His work draws on themes of material transformation and the interconnectedness of all things, engaging with the poetic and often invisible forces that shape the cosmos. His distinctive approach to art has garnered international recognition, including the prestigious 2016 Collide International Award at CERN, along with honors from Ars Electronica, Transmediale, and VIDA 15.0.
In our time, the multi-hyphenate reigns. A now-timeless saying from the great Alberti is that “a man can do all things,” which has become an idealism brought down to us from the Humanistic triumphs of the Italian Renaissance. Now, what one’s educational attainments are no longer dictates how they must evolve and apply their capabilities. I start here because you are an artist of a multifarious pedigree, first university-trained in Music, and now a world-recognized creator of machines with opalescent life- forces rushing through their Adamantine and resin veins. Please Yunchul, do enlighten us on how you grew into the artist whose work we’re now enamored by.
Above all, I think studying contemporary music and media art had the biggest influence. I wonder if there were any other fields of study at that time that could offer such interdisciplinary practice as these two. At the time, my main interest in music was working with abstractness beyond language and acoustic events in time-based spatiotemporal dimensions. I think the various composition methods of contemporary music, such as viewing a single sound as a particle, creating sounds through physical modeling, or composing music through statistical structures, naturally led to interdisciplinary research across multiple fields, not just music.
Studying media art also led me to think about metamedia aspects of the medium itself, beyond any applied or technical aspects. It provided me with various motivations to contemplate and put into practice ideas about the relationship between humans and technology, and visions beyond human imagination that connect not only the contemporary era but also from the past to the future. I believe these experiences might have laid the foundation for my personal thoughts on art. Additionally, one of the important factors is meeting colleagues who inspire me and having deep exchanges with them, which I think has been the driving force that keeps me on this path.
When speaking of your Chroma series, you’ve beautifully connected their liquid internal movements to the shifts of solar winds, this hinting at a fascinating discourse between art and the cosmos. If we accept Karen Barad’s idea that “existence is not an individual affair,” and recognize the deep connection of even celestial forces in these “intra-actions,” can we then see your work as taking part in a grand “cosmic choreography,” guided by forces beyond human control? If yes, what should this intimate about our place in the world?
An important part of my work is experimenting with materials and using their potential dispositions as inspiration for my work. Chroma also began as a result of experimenting with many materials that manifest color and pattern through their material properties. The process of making these pieces is based on many experiments. In addition, the humidity and temperature of the weather during the experiment also affect the materials of the work and sometimes give different results. In this practice I also experience concepts like Karen Barad’s ́intra-acting ́ or Tim Ingold’s ́thinging in a worlding world ́ as a practice.
So I call it mattereal, which is my concept of moving away from the anthrophrocentric and placing things, non-humans, and humans on the same flat ontology, and I call the changes in the turbulent cosmic events transmattering. I think this is how we relate to essence, not as a grand narritive, not as a concept, not as taking the object out of the world, but as relating to us in its turbulence. This allows us to establish a new relationship with nature, with machines, and sometimes with a new humanism. Nothing is independent, but intra-acting with invisible relations that cannot be counted, and even dreams that are not really awakened are connected to us.
Your work blends handcraft and scientific method, notational precision and visual art, drawing inspiration from both Eastern and Western thought. You come across as one who builds bridges between different ways of knowing and experiencing, which is vital for our era where communication across differences is rare yet unmistakably requisite. What potential do you see for art to create conversations and connections that might not have otherwise happened?
In my opinion, if there is a fundamental and unchanging characteristic in art, I believe it might be a certain freedom and instability that resists being fixed. I think this is what makes art meaningfully present in our lives without any imposition, though sometimes it may seem futile. Art has the potential to express, to make us dream, and to awaken us. The point where multiple interpretations are possible both connects and disconnects the audience and the artist.
This freedom and instability in art connects me to various disciplines, from today’s technology and science to even the forgotten methods of creating shamanic costumes from ancient times. I think this is what leads me to conduct experiments through sometimes speculative and sometimes scientific methodologies. Therefore, I wonder if there’s anything else that allows us to look into an individual’s intentions and reflect on ourselves as much as art does. Art often poses unanswered questions, just like an ‘unanswered question’ itself. It’s precisely this point that makes us imagine, dream, awaken, and engage in dialogue.
Teaming up with CERN seems a dream for many intellectuals who also have masterful artistic predilections. I’ve read that CERN’s art extension aims to close the gap between science and the public, to make the invisible world easier to understand. Your work is special in that it remains, in ways, abstract and interpretatively open when divorced from its art statement context but has clear links to quantum and even symbolic truths underpinning Nature or experience. With this in mind, do you think ambiguity is a barrier to understanding, or is it instead a path to a different kind of engagement—one that inspires wonder and thought rather than demanding definite conclusions?
I understand this ambiguity and the gap between artwork and audience well through Duchamp’s concept of the “art coefficient.” Duchamp explains that when there is no art coefficient gap in a work, the piece becomes clear but flat, and when there are too many gaps, the work becomes disconnected from its audience. Therefore, I think this ambiguity might be an important element in any artwork, and I believe there is even such an ambiguous gap between myself and my work.
I rarely create work with a completely clear concept that faithfully follows through. This is because the moment a concept materializes, it escapes our language and becomes directly exposed to time and gravity. Can we actually achieve 100% black in material form? Matter is endlessly changing and responding to changing environments. So while we try to capture artwork as symbols or concepts, in reality, it is constantly slipping through the nets of language and concept at every moment.
You’ve talked about feeling a sense of oneness with materials, losing yourself in the process of creation. Vermiculite, in its natural state, looks unassuming but contains the potential for astounding and brilliant transformation, as you have shown us, much like ferrofluids before their electromagnetic undulations. Because I see a thread of similarity between these materials, what else is it about materials per se, beyond their practical uses, that speaks to you?
My experimental lab in the studio is like a pre-scientific lab, not equipped with many instruments and analytical devices. As a result, I encounter materials with my whole body’s senses, much like a painter would. At this point, I sometimes experience either an extremely narrowed distance between the subject and observation, or even a sense of becoming one with it. For example, when I produce nanoparticles through experiments and observe their changes, I don’t use microscopes or any analytical devices.
For me, it’s not just about the results of experiments, but by observing various changes that emerge during the process, I come to see the material not just as an object but as an actor connected to myself and the studio environment. Of course, I understand material properties through research papers in material science and engineering and chemistry, but I often experience moments of becoming one with the subject, similar to traditional East Asian painters.
I also discover principles that cause optical changes through the chemical components inherent in materials, or develop new compounds through my own methods and develop them further. Materials inspire me not only through their chemical composition but also through their history. Taking vermiculite as an example, it’s a material that was buried in a South American mine without seeing light for eons, and one day transforms into a subject that emits light in an exhibition space – I call this ‘transmattering,’ and the manifestation of light through vermiculite I call ‘matterphor.’
Ferrofluid is also an artificial compound created through various experimental processes. For instance, it requires experiments such as coating nanoparticles to prevent them from tangling with each other due to magnetic forces. Throughout this entire process, scientific observation and imaginative sensing always coexist. Thus, these two different materials, with their different physical properties, transform from objects into subjects as actors causing aesthetic events in the artwork. Nanoparticles from vermiculite reveal various colors, and ferrofluid attractively displays its unique fluid flow under magnetic forces. These create reveries of new materials that we don’t experience in our daily lives.
I reflect on your adoration of the now-rarefied art of poetry reading. Foucault, using Borges’ ideas, described the labyrinth as a place where truth “shows itself in glimpses, but never fully.” Your triptych, named “Dawns, Mine, Crystal,” being a form rather different from your installations yet connected, explores the complexities of time in a way that requires imaginative imbuings from perceivers. This moves me to ask, does your artistic exploration of time align with the A-theory? Or do your kinetic installations, with their changing natures, suggest a more fluid, B-theory view?
I experience fluidity of time extensively while creating my artwork. I also think of my work as an oscillator that allows multiple times to coexist. In fact, numerous times are overlapped in the work. I believe it creates complex layers of undulating time where various temporalities overlap – the chronological time of machinery, the time of fluids used in the work, chemical time, my own kairos time, and the audience’s time. In this space, time doesn’t flow in one direction but branches endlessly in numerous directions, like Borges’ universe.
The aforementioned trilogy consists of three works that detect particles occurring on Earth and in space, and transmit them through transparent microscopic tubes via pumps that regulate fluid flow. Three major different times flow within it. One is the time of particles – an unperceivably short, cosmic yet scientifically real time; another is the symptomatic slow time passing through the mechanical pressure of pumps that move the fluid; and then there’s the volatile time of bubbles forming and disappearing as fluid flows through the microtube. Numerous temporalities emerge in this way.
Your roots in music have granted you a fascinating relationship with time—not just viewing it as a straight line but as a material to be shaped and utilized. Considering Henri Bergson’s idea that “we do not think real time. But we live it,” how do your sculptures brimming with exotic iridescence and sprawling installations allow the viewer to really feel time’s passage, rhythms, and textures? This is to ask, what fleeting “echoes” of time’s journey do you hope to capture in your work?
The work titled “Chroma” is a piece that uses kinetic devices to apply external deforming forces to layered polymers, causing colors and patterns to emerge. Currently exhibited at 798 Cube in Beijing, Chroma consists of 540 mechanical joints that must move 1,080 polymer layers. Without the inspiration for handling time, this 16-meter-long massive sculpture could lose its vitality. Additionally, it requires real-time event composition through algorithms that make it move based on external data input. Many variables and mathematical ideas are programmed into it.
This allows audiences to experience in real-time both the kinetic movement of the work and the events of changing colors and patterns it creates. When you include factors like light intensity and mechanical noise, it really requires an insight similar to conducting numerous instruments while decoding a complex musical score. Thus, audiences experience time emerging from both the exterior and interior of the work. I think an important process of the work is exploring and capturing both the topological dimension of Chroma’s knots that draws the work into an abstract world, and the mathematical dimension that generates its external curves and brings them into being.
You skillfully use advanced tech in your productions but also recognize its potential to overshadow artistic creation when one isn’t cognizant of how it can invade and supplant the creator. Do you see this dialectic as a natural tension for artists today? If so, how do you work to keep a balance between your own agency and the necessities required when making?
This is an important question. I think this question applies to all modern people who use technology today. It’s true that technology has always been alongside art. A single piece of paper or paint isn’t simply collected from nature but is produced through many technological processes. However, many people feel that an acrylic painting is analog, while often misunderstanding colors manifested through new technologies as merely technical. Actually, the most important aspect of my work is the process of directly discovering and creating the most crucial materials while handling substances.
Specifically, it’s about selecting stones and treating them with fire, water, and ultrasound to create nano-sized particles, transforming them into agencies that create and change color. Thus, in my work, matter directly “transmatters” from being a material to becoming a subject. When materials processed this way meet the audience in the exhibition space, viewers sometimes awaken to new sensations through the unfamiliarity of the material and its material symptoms. While this practice requires numerous new technologies and theories, I have a distinct perspective that doesn’t view technology and matter solely as objects to be controlled. I think this might be my unique point of engagement with technology.
Yunchul Kim: https://yunchulkim.net/
