April 1992: Recycled objects are among the materials used by Korean-born artist Jin Soo Kim to create the thirtieth Grand Lobby Project at The Brooklyn Museum. Entitled Tacit Transit, it will be on view May 29 through September 6, 1992. The installation will comprise large-scale wire-mesh modules filled with found objects, which together will divide the 60 by 40 foot Lobby into a series of smaller spaces.
Kim’s practice of recycling discarded fragments from the everyday environment reflects both her youth in Korea, where every scrap of rope, paper, or wire was reused, and her work as a nurse through 1989. She has translated the cycle of death, birth, and healing she witnessed during her medical career into a process of resurrecting objects and endowing them with new life and new functions. After each of her installations, she retrieves many objects in order to reuse them, thus continuing the process of renewal.
Born in Seoul, Korea, in 1950, Kim emigrated to Los Angeles in 1974 and earned her M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1983 while supporting herself as a nurse. Now an instructor at the Institute, she lives and maintains a studio in nearby Evanston.
Jin Soo Kim will be the featured guest at the Museum’s “Meet the Artist” program for children ages 6-12 on Saturday, May 30, at 3 p.m. Under the direction of the artist and a Museum educator, children will participate in a gallery talk and hands-on workshop that will focus on recycling found objects and making them into art.
The Grand Lobby project was organized by Charlotta Kotik, Chair of the Department of Painting and Sculpture and Curator of Contemporary Art, with the assistance of Pamela S. Johnson, a curatorial intern funded by the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund. The exhibition and its associated Artist-in-Residence programs are made possible by the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1989 - 1994. 07-12/1992, 230-231.
