Seunghyun Kim

Installation View (1)

LKIF Gallery is pleased to announce Over The Words, a solo exhibition by Seunghyun Kim. This marks the artist’s fourth presentation at the gallery. The exhibition centers on Kim’s ongoing Born Series, which he began in 2011—an essential body of work in his exploration of the conceptual relationship between text and image. 

Installation View (2)

Begun in 2011 and continuing to the present, the Born Series is an experiment in how language can activate visual memory. Each work uses words to evoke the image of a specific artwork, transforming linguistic fragments into conceptual cues. By collecting and composing these words onto a single canvas, Kim invites viewers into a present visual experience that reawakens past encounters with art.

Installation View (3)

Each piece in the exhibition operates like a visual quiz: a set of keywords invites the viewer to identify the artworks being referenced. For instance, a triangular canvas placed on the gallery floor reads “79 kilograms of candy” and “two clocks,” unmistakably pointing to Félix González-Torres’s Portrait of Ross in L.A. and Perfect Lovers.

Installation View (4)

 In another work, Kim arranges text in the form of a tower, echoing Ugo Rondinone’s iconic stone totems. The background is painted in the warm hues of a desert sunset—reminiscent of the landscapes where Rondinone’s sculptures are often installed—and includes the name of his late partner, John Giorno. Visual, textual, and emotional references converge to signal the presence of Rondinone.

Installation View (5)

Over The Words may also be viewed as Kim’s own Wunderkammer—a personal cabinet of curiosities—constructed through the Born Series over more than a decade. The collected words, curated through the artist’s perspective, form a personal lexicon that, as the title suggests, extends beyond language. These fragments carry echoes of memory, embedded directly or indirectly within each work. By weaving together language and image, Kim constructs a layered perceptual space. Through the act of viewing, audiences traverse between present experience and remembered encounters—moving between now and then, presence and recollection.

Installation View (6)

Each work in the Born Series begins with the same phrase: “I was born to decorate your room with –.” Though composed of words drawn from the artist’s personal archive, each work ultimately finds its place in a collector’s space— created to inhabit and transform that room. For Kim, this exhibition functions not only as his own Wunderkammer, but also as a conceptual extension of the viewers’ spaces: the collectors’ rooms themselves.

LKIF GALLERY
3-11, Samseong-ro 149-gil, Gangnamgu, Seoul 06063+82 2 794 5557

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