RECEPTION: SATURDAY, AUGUST 2ND 6–9 PM
EXHIBITION DATES: AUGUST 1ST - SEPTEMBER 20TH, 2025
KEY-SOOK GEUM
ENLIGHTENMENT AND RESONANCE
KEY-SOOK GEUM
KEY-SOOK GEUM
ENLIGHTENMENT AND RESONANCE
In her exacting sculptural objects of haute couture and traditional Korean dresses, gowns, and coats, Keysook Geum uses a wide range of signature materials, including wire, beads, buttons, paper, silver foil, pearls, and spangle, to make porous forms which invite the viewer’s boundless speculation. Whether an evening gown or a hanbok, the dresses represent ways women from Western and Eastern cultures present themselves during ritual occasions, such as a ball, gala, festival, or a wedding. Ritualized presentations are, of course, integral to every culture. Originating in a culture’s history, and changing slowly over time, the dresses and gowns evoke the indispensable role women play in every society, as well as embody a culture’s deepest stories.
In their sensitivity to light and shadow, Geum’s glamorous and vulnerable, wall-mounted, hanging, and freestanding sculptural objects convey change, endurance, and ephemerality. Enlightenment in Red is a red wire and beaded, free-hanging dress. The red wire and beads floating like a wall of leaves above the dress convey change, but that is not all. Was the dress born from mythical nature or is it dissipating? That tension can also be found in Resonance in White (2025), where parts of the white dress seem to be floating out of the hip. We don’t know exactly what the dress is becoming, but we believe the transformation will be profound.
Geum’s permeable works exist on the verge between form and dissolution without either dominating the other. That strain invites all kinds of readings regarding the legacy of history, and the struggle between limitation and freedom. At the same time, the beauty of these works is undeniable. Her use of colored beads and wires suggests veins, arteries, and cells–nature’s inevitable growth and cycles of regeneration. Few sculptors are able to summon so many associations in a single work. As immediate as they are in their sensuousness, delicacy, and sturdiness, Geum’s dresses remain mysterious, a dance of light and shadow, of time passing. Her work is unlike anything else being made, and speaks to us on so many levels.
- John Yau
Intricate and allusive, artist Key-Sook Geum’s sculptures and installations capture paradoxical qualities: presence and absence, form and negative space, reality and imagination
- Richard Speer
Key-Sook Geum
Nirvana in Gold III, 2025
black wire and gold signature beads
64h x 30w x 8d in
SOLD
Key-Sook Geum
Enlightenment in White Pearls
silver color wire with white pearls
31h 21w x 11d in
SOLD
Key-Sook Geum
Enlightenment in Rose Beige Pearls
black wire, rose beige pearl
30h x 18w x 11d in
Key-Sook Geum
Enlightnment in Red
wire, beads
44 x 34 x 20
42 x 72 installation element
SOLD
Key-Sook Geum
White Floating Resonance
white paper wrapped wire, spangle and beads
45h x 41w x 41d in
Key-Sook Geum
Enlightnment in Red
wire, beads
44 x 34 x 20 in
42 x 72 ( installation element_
Key-Sook Geum
Enlightenment in White Pearls
silver color wire with white pearls
35h x 17w x 9d in
Key-Sook Geum
Enlightenment in Rose Beige Pearls
black wire, rose beige pearl
30h x 18w x 11d in
Key-Sook Geum
Nirvana in Gold III, 2025
black wire and gold signature beads
64h x 30w x 8d in
SOLD
Key-Sook Geum
White Floating Resonance
white paper wrapped wire, spangle and beads
45h x 41w x 41d in
