Secret Garden

Leo Gallery is thrilled to unveil "Secret Garden," a solo project by Byoungho Kim. This project is cultivated using metallic modules that hint at the foundational elements of sculpture. It explores geometric aesthetics unfolding within the orderly landscapes of civilized society. A garden is a human-scaled cosmos that can be tamed; Kim refines overgrown forests into artificial gardens, embracing the unique value of mechanical civilization. The garden he defines serves as a metaphor for mechanical civilization and a symbol of mass production.

Kim delves into the relationship between humans and industrialized contemporary civilization through his metal sculptures. His shiny, sharp, round-tipped, reflective, and propagative works result from critical observations of material environments and institutionalized systems. As the fruits of the marriage between cutting-edge technology and traditional labor, Kim’s works represent his effort to find equilibrium between civilization and nature. In particular, he expands and compresses space and time using metals as artistic media, examining the boundary between order and chaos.

From a general perspective, the term "garden" refers to spaces created by humans through the control of nature and the arrangement of natural elements. However, Kim transcends this common understanding, expanding the definition of a garden to denote a space that reflects our interaction with nature while also symbolizing the manmade, artificial, and structured world. This alludes to “artificial nature” or the structural environments we inhabit, such as social norms, regulations, institutions, and industrialized systems. Kim’s garden stretches beyond conventional definitions, existing as “a space of desire and pleasure” in artistic experiences or as a personal space where poetic experiences and images linger, stimulating aesthetic imagination.

Interpretations of this work are valid from the audience's perspective, allowing for the reinterpretation and layering of various narratives found in "Secret Garden."

—— adapted from art critic Yoonjung Choi’s ‘Systems and Structures of the Artificial World and the Principle of Inevitable Nature and Generation’