Soo Hyeon Kim

I have a deep interest to experiment with the possibilities of paraffin wax. It has a remarkable ability to melt congruently and solidify at a certain temperatures, and I have learned to use that to my advantage. The versatility of the material is that both solid and liquid changes are immediately observable, and its viscosity when it is solidifying is almost like time slowing down.

Over the past couple of years I have learnt how to manipulate the wax such that it can solidify into forms that seem to defy gravity. It is this stillness of time that makes this material so appealing to me. It can allude to a hard or rough surface, a sensual and smooth surface, and a porous or dense surface, always sloping around the edges.

When I manipulate the material, the endpoint is constantly in flux. What has solidified is a consequence of time that has accumulated according to what I require from it. I am interested in the subject lost time, in the sense that some events are impossible to witness from beginning to end. Examples of these are:

Standing at the foot of a mountain and witnessing an avalanche.

Living in a cave through wet and dry seasons.

Witnessing the changing tides of the sea at night.

And so on and so forth.

As such, the ecosystems that I build become microcosms of major events like these, coupled with the ability to speed things up, slow things down, or even put a pause, allows my work to be immersive and intimate for my viewer.