Kim Hyunsook was once seriously troubled with her identity as an artist. All artists are tortured by this problem without exception, but Kim suffered from its aftereffects in terms of time and physical strength. The traces it left, however, offered momentum to look back on herself, and to open up a new path for her work. At the time, Kim developed the concept that artistic work is a game. Since then Kim has worked with objects she feels interested in, and the first objects she chose were the tools she saw at her father’s kiln, who engaged in producing roof tiles. Kim later realized this is a very creative, natural form of play. After reaching adulthood, Kim has discovered her identity and draws the possibilities of her art from the tools forming part of her memory and sensibility. The artist makes her studio a place where she attains her aesthetic sense by breathing freedom and imagination into her empirical tools as the main subject matter of her work.
Although the objects (the tools) Kim employs are in the same context with those of her previous work, and in an extension of play, her recent work shows little change in the way of expressing them. Recently, plastic models concretized in another form have become her trade mark. The reason why Kim notes the plastic models is because she thinks that an assemblage and combination of each unit may reflect her identity appropriately. She feels a plastic model reveals her anxiety about work and identity by integrating her independently existing memories into her sensibility. More recently, the artist has focused more attention on how each object reveals herself or her consciousness directly rather than on its individual meaning.
작가 김현숙이 “미술 작업이란 곧 놀이”라는 개념의 초석을 그의 작업에 들여놓기 시작한 것은 작가로써 정체성에 대해 심각하게 고민하며, 심하게 몸살을 앓을 정도의 고뇌의 시간을 보낸 후였다. 그는 평소 관심을 가졌던 대상을 통해 작업을 하기 시작했으며, 처음 선택한 오브제가 바로 어린 시절, 기와제작을 하시던 아버지의 일터에서 보아온 수많은 공구들이었다. 작가는 추억의 일부이자 과거 감수성을 뒷받침하던 공구들에서 자신의 정체성과 예술의 가능성을 이끌어냈다.
그가 프라모델에 주목한 것은 개별 유닛을 조립하고 조합된 결과물이 자신의 정체성과 맞닿아 있다고 생각했기 때문이었다. 최근에 이르러 작가는 자기 자신을, 혹은 자신의 의식을 직설적으로 드러내는 오브제의 개인적 의미보다는 그 것들의 연관성과 관계에 더욱 주목하고 있다.