As an artist, Oksun Kim aims to be a recorder of images who refuse any value judgments. She conscientiously conducts herself as someone who does not know how to be judgmental. As she writes, "I will not approach her anymore / I will not force her to speak, nor question her." In short, she maintains an objective distance and assumes her role as a dispassionate archivist of naked physicality, and of the reality residing in that physicality. She is merely an observer who objectifies and subjectifies the women's bodies and their rooms. To Kim, the aesthetics the empathy are an outdated product of a past era. She has placed herself firmly in the sphere of this era's aesthetics, which does not hesitate to expose one's own nakedness. Objective detachment, the exactitude of documentation and a medical dispassion are ideals that are important to her. There is no room here for the voyeuristic male gaze or any sexual desire. Eroticism has been castrated, so to speak, from Kim's nude portraits, and consequently, her work carries with it tremendous sociological implications. A sense of pride in womanhood free from all complexes, the dissipation of physical taboos, the collapse of the Madonna ideal, etc., all signify changes in the consciousness of contemporary Korean women.

Choi, Bonglim (Curator)