Atta Kim: The Museum Project

📗 In The Museum Project, Korean artist Atta Kim commandeers average scenes - city streets, department stores, freight depots, and forests - and turns them into exhibition spaces. On display are people crammed into acrylic boxes, stacked in sets, on end, or sometimes alone. In selecting his subjects and isolating them in their boxes, Kim aims to "detach them from reality; to display and deconstruct at the same time my own concept of the world." Kim compares his efforts to that of an archaeologist, sifting through the cultural strata in order to unearth and hold up exemplary objects for our contemplation. The Museum Project is composed of a number of series, such as "War Memorial," "Sex," "Suicide," and other human typologies, each intended to highlight a particular mode of behavior or belief. In certain series, the subjects are isolated from their natural settings, each display case simply framed and offset by backdrops in primary colors. The resulting images are curious and startling, straddling the indeterminate ground between performance, photography, and an alternate form of anthropology. Curator Yu Yeon Kim addresses the metaphysical and societal aspects of Atta Kim's work. She examines how the work relates to Eastern philosophy and Buddhism, as well as how it reflects the pressure cooker of contemporary Korean society.