Art Sonje Center is pleased to announce Lune, Où, par-dessus le marché, Silence, a solo exhibition by Kim Soun Gui, a video artist who has lived and worked in France since 1971. She showed her first video work in 1973, and since then she has been working in diverse media that include installation, multimedia art, performance, and photography. She is deeply influenced by Buddhist thought, the philosophies of Lao-tse and Tchuang-tse, and Wittgenstein’s investigation on language. Through her works, she explores the nature of time and the play of language, and questions of life and art. Kim is also the author of numerous papers, articles, and books. After Stock Exchange in 2000, this is the artist’s second solo exhibition at Art Sonje Center. Included in the show are video recordings of interviews with distinguished French philosophers and performances by a renowned composer. Also included in the show are the “bègue calligraphie(stuttering calligraphy)” series and the “photographie idiot” series.

Since the 1970s, Kim’s work has involved in-depth exchanges with internationally renowned artists and philosophers; From the 1990s on, major themes in Kim’s work has been her concern with the direction of contemporary art in the increasingly globalized world, and specifically the relationship between art and the art market. Kim has explored “silence” and “chaos,” investigations with intellectual roots in Eastern philosophical thought. These explorations are deepened in her interview with Jean-Luc Nancy (b. 1940) and Jacques Derrida (1930–2004). In Conversation with Nancy (2002), Kim and Nancy discuss the absence of content in contemporary art. They also discuss in depth where Eastern and Western philosophies might meet and where they might separate. In Conversation with Derrida (2002), Kim ruminates on Deconstructionist premises from the perspective of Eastern thought and shows her investigation on the “art of silence” as an act of resistance against globalization.

John Cage—Empty Words & Mirage Verbal (1986) comprises two separate video recordings of the American composer John Cage (1912–1992) performing Empty Words and Mirage Verbalat the festival “Video & Multimedia/Kim Soun Gui & Her Guests,” held at La Vieille Charité, Marseille. In these performances, the famous composer reads and sings the words of Henry David Thoreau and Marcel Duchamp that he has selected following the rules indicated in Book of Changes.

Other works included in the exhibition are Ice Video Concert: Vide & O (1989), Su-Su-Su An gué Sorié (1998), Kom Kom Han Dong Zok Badaé (1998), Lunes (2003) and AIE-JOU-AIE-JOU (2013). While Lunes is a series of photographs taken with a pinhole camera that the artist built herself, Su-Su-Su An gué Sorié and Kom Kom Han Dong Zok Badaé are calligraphies of texts taken from the artist’s note. AIE-JOU-AIE-JOU presents moving images that conceived randomly by a computer program. These images are then combined, also arbitrarily, with images of Lee Aeju, a friend of artist, choreographer, dancer, pedagogue of Korean traditional dance and the Korean government-designated “intangible cultural asset” for a Buddhist dance, Seungmu.