Byron Kim at Max Protetch

As an exercise in self-portraiture, Byron Kim's exhibition "Oddly Flowing" was exceptionally oblique--and equally rewarding, the photographs especially. Like so many solo shows lately, the first impression it made was that the works on view (all 2005) were produced by a disparate half-dozen artists, none closely related to Kim. Among the most seemingly out-of-character were two thickly painted and curiously lightless imitations of not-quite-recognizable paintings by van Gogh. These, the press release reveals, actually reproduce portions of a single work, van Gogh's Church at Auvers, a (conventional) reproduction of which hung in Kim's childhood bedroom. His second-order reproductions were finger-painted in plasticene; since this material never dries, there is irony--or a conceptual twist--to the series title, "Permanent Painting." The only other painting shown was the diptych Palms (Head over Heart), a pair of greatly enlarged representations of the artist's palms (each is 60 inches square). Surely self-portraits in synecdoche (to use the word that titled Kim's most well-known work, a pseudo-minimalist grid of different skin tones), the twin palms are also surrogate landscapes, with their prominent lifelines running like a river from one to the other.

This is as close as Kim gets to self-exposure, though he was present in the three digital C-prints on view, if only from the ankles down, and in shadows. These prints, panoramas assembled from dozens of sequential shots in something like the manner made popular by David Hockney, but then re-photographed to make luminous, faceted wholes, are of places personally meaningful to Kim: Torrey Pines State Park in La Jolla, near where he grew up; Prospect Park in Brooklyn, close to where he now lives; and his own backyard. Kim clearly subscribes to the belief that the landscape (like the sky) starts at your feet; his shoes enter the picture at the lower margins repeatedly, along with his sometimes portentously long shadow. Just as he pieced together these vistas--of the gloriously sun-struck seaside pine grove, the snowbound park abounding with joyful kids on sleds, and the improbably verdant if tiny backyard--we are encouraged to piece together a life: family guy, loving son, and irrepressibly restless, roving eye.

The show's title piece, Prelude (Oddly Flowing), is a quirky sound sculpture, its randomly harmonious pings and chimes composed by musician David Lang, its visual focus a gently spinning beach ball in a plastic bucket. Even more opaque (though materially, at least, it was meant to be partly transparent), the nonetheless beguiling When Beavers Were the Size of Bears is a big mirrored fish tank intended to reflect and refract all the disparate work shown, integrating it, viewers and just barely visible fish into an aptly liquid, faceted whole.

The bumpy rhythm of the show's title is apt. Flow is after all a word nearly synonymous with smooth, and in pop psychology refers to experience that proceeds without conscious intervention or even awareness: if not quite the opposite of oddness, then close. But "oddly flowing" isn't a simple oxymoron, it's a little koan, perfectly describing work that is as moving as it is eccentric.

--Nancy Princenthal

COPYRIGHT 2006 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning