The artist makes wall-mounted ‘light boxes’, fabricated from acrylic sheet, exposed film stock and LED lighting. Strips of old and discarded film are cut up and arranged to create large, complex collages, which are backlit by the LEDs within the boxes. Multi-coloured, pixellated patterns, reminiscent of mandalas and sacred geometries, create a glowing, kaleidoscopic effect. It is only on closer inspection that the nature of the source material is revealed. The viewer discovers a plethora of tiny and intriguing images, some recognisable, others less so.
The cutting and pasting process, intrinsic to making the collages, corresponds to that of the film editor, who assembles fragments of information to make a coherent whole. Kim Bumsu’s compositions assimilate the disparate nature of their components and unite them into something new. The artist salvages and re-purposes that which is lost or unwanted. He explains this as an act of ‘romanticism’ that ‘arouses compassion’. Wishing to rescue what has been abandoned, his fractured re-making of lost narratives reminds us of the pre-digital, analogue age and its particularly tangible pleasures.
The format of this work brings to mind altarpieces, the sacred displays of temples and the iconography of cathedrals. It also elicits a ‘bright and shiny’, secular appeal, akin to the seductive displays of the luxury shopping outlet. The work oscillates between the sacred and profane, referencing the rich sensory experience of immersive cinema, the adrenal rush of consumerism and the awe of the spiritual.
