In WARP 5, South Korean artist Cheolyu Kim renders surreal dreamscapes to understand his very real childhood anxieties growing up near the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea. To move at warp speed is to create a bubble that distorts space and time, allowing travel from one point of the universe to another. Cheolyu explores the cosmic horror and sheer force of the DMZ, venturing into an interdimensional hyperreality. 

This hyperreality is found in the ring-shaped forms of the WARP 5 series, which are studies of movement through time and space. Through stratified spirals, one is hypnotically led to the abyss. The hole is an important characteristic in these drawings as one is pulled closer and deeper. By imagining these “warp bubbles” as taking one from one place to be folded at lightspeed to another, then one is seeing the absolute expression of Cheolyu’s “journey to nowhere”. 

The imaginative realm, which is activated through the potential of art, allows us to more meaningfully engage and manage our current reality. The art of Cheolyu Kim is not just contemporary because it is connected to our current time but transcends the trajectory of our visual understandings through temporal ruptures and hyperreality. The place the art brings you to is one that pushes us beyond our consciousness by folding thought from one point to another. 

Opening Thursday 12th March, 5-7PM
5:30PM Guest of Honour:  Professor Jing Han, Director of the Australia-China Institute for Arts and Culture at the Western Sydney University