Sung Hwan Kim: Protected by roof and right-hand muscles video tour

Over the past two decades, artist Sung Hwan Kim has produced lyrical multimedia installations and performances that merge the mythological and the everyday, with music—namely his collaboration with musician and composer David Michael DiGregorio (aka dogr)—critical to all. Protected by roof and right-hand muscles carries with it the artist’s tendency to situate his working-through of large concepts in the domestic sphere and with self-reflection. The exhibition title is borrowed from DiGregorio’s song “things are not more exciting than they are” from his 2009 album In Korean Wilds and Villages:

At the Van Abbemuseum, Kim also takes the role of exhibition designer and rearranges key film environments and performances from works that poetically navigate and contextualize ideas around borders. Discussions on boundaries within the institution have led the artist to introduce thresholds that carry us from one room to the next while holding the space for the in-between. Each gallery or room consists of a key video work by Kim, along with drawings and installations that interact with it in customized architectural environments.

Through his distinctive method of intertwining video, music, storytelling, and sculpture within the gallery space, Kim has developed a unique narrative approach to migration, immigration, translation, and regeneration. Folklore, myth, and gossip are portals through which to enter his layered installations where feelings are reliable sources for understanding the world. The emphasis on height (visual and physical), texture (same objects in different materials), trajectory (within each work and room to a room), and drama (absence and presence of light) abstracts reality, inviting the viewer to seek their own sensory interpretations of the film environments.