A process of elimination

Artist Kin In-bai is presenting faceless abstract sculptures in his solo exhibition celebrating the reopening of Arario Gallery Seoul. The show, “Eliminate Points, Lines and Planes”, seeks to break stereotypes of human figures. Instead of faces or heads, Kim uses geometrical forms.
His latest works, shown seven years after his first exhibition at Arario in 2007, have shed the round faces of his previous sculptures. They’re a combination of geometrical forms and muscular body structures. Eyes, noses and mouths are missing from the triangular or quadrilateral heads.
His works are displayed in a classic fashion: They are placed on tall plinths, as if they were ancient sculptures at the British Museum or the Louvre.
The bust titled “Gendarloake” takes the form of two 3-D inverted triangles that converge at the bottom. “I expressed whatever I felt after imagining a face without eyes,” Kim says. “I concentrated on how lines create planes and angles.”
Kim intended to create contrasts through the presentation of his works in the two exhibition rooms. In the basement, his sculptures have been arranged to create the ambience of an ancient Greek or Egyptian temple. A male human figure whose face is a wide triangle sits on a tall rectangular platform as if he were the ruler, and sculptures with minimal faces are displayed on both sides.
“There are two sides to it,” Kim explains. “First, the image of the figures and their arrangement are intended to look intimidating and dominant. But the sculptures are quite the opposite. Their hands are cut off, replaced by round balls. They are in no position to intimidate anyone. I guess this can be seen as the denial of established systems like religion.”
While the sculptures in the bright white room have unmistakably geometrical shapes, those in a darker room on the second floor are abstract. The ambiguous titles of the busts are taken from the artist’s first impressions of his works.