Soo Kim’s photographic works employ techniques of cutting and layering in order to introduce areas of absence or disruption. For Aria, Kim produced a suite of photographs depicting the process of arranging a bouquet of red, yellow, and blue flowers. Riffing on a Bas Jan Ader film Primary Time from 1974 wherein the artist rearranged vases of flowers to be exclusively yellow, then red, then blue—Kim’s elegiac series moves beyond conceptual notions of maintenance and formal implications of color, and into themes of care, touch, comfort, and reflection.

Moved by the terminal diagnosis of a friend, this series of still lifes was sparked by the desire to memorialize, to offer a tenderness. Notably, it marks an inward turn for Kim’s practice; contrasted by previous bodies of work, which drew the artist outside of the studio and into cityscapes and nature, these photographs were shot inside the artist’s studio and are imbued with a sensitive intimacy.

The works are at once additive and extractive, while a pair of hands arrange and adjust the blooms considering the passage of time, Kim’s surgical-like process of cutting and removal interrogates building blocks of formalism through composition and color juxtapositions. Flowers are a powerful symbol of life’s sensual pleasures. Fragrant eye candy, their presence can mark a range of occasions conjuring images of weddings (celebration), funerals (mourning), or hospitals (birth, illness, and recovery). Operating like Dutch still lifes and vanitas paintings, the works in Aria reach for something permanent, offering their beauty while reminding us of the cyclical qualities of nature and the impermanence of life itself.

As a compliment to this new series of works, writer Sarah Shun-lien Bynum contributed a poetic text installed inside the exhibition.