20년간 소리를 다뤄온 조각가의 다음 이야기, 침묵
참여작가ㅣ김기철

소멸이 아닌 생명의 시작을 의미하는 11월 <침묵의 소리>라는 제목으로 열리는 김기철 작가의 개인전은 보통 소리의 멈춤, 나아가 죽음을 은유하는 침묵에 소리가 있다고 말한다. ‘소리없는 아우성’과 같은 역설이다. 헤이리라는 장소와 전시장을 보며 소리에 집중할 수 있을 것 같은 공간이라 말했던 그가 왜 소리가 아닌 침묵을 이야기하는 것인가. 김기철은 ‘소리조각(Sound Sculpture)’이라는 개념으로 지난 20년간 일관되게 소리를 조각의 재료로 다루어왔다. 그는 정지된 사물로서의 조각에 단순히 소리의 요소를 더한 것이 아니라 소리란 무엇인가에 대한 질문에 대해 답해가는 가운데 철학적인 자신만의 작업세계를 구축해왔다. 길이와 높이, 양과 색 같은 소리의 물리적 조건들을 시각적으로 건조하게 재현한 초기작업에서부터 빗소리 같은 자연음으로 심상의 풍경을 자아내는 감각적인 공간작업들, 그리고 사람의 음성을 통해 소리의 의미론적 시원을 다루는 최근 작업에 이르기까지 소리의 여러 층위들을 두드려온 그가 이제 가장 단단한 층, 즉 소리의 본질에 가까운 질문을 던지고 있다. 소리에 대한 오랜 관심이 그 대척점으로 인식되는 침묵으로 귀결된 것이다. 그렇다면 침묵에 관한 이 전시는 무음, 즉 소리가 없는 상태에 관한 것일까. 김기철은 침묵도 소리라고 말한다. ‘들리지 않는’, ‘듣고자 하지 않는’ 소리라는 것이다. 소리란 듣는다는 것에 관한 것이고 결국 소리는 마음에 관한 것이다. 철학의 경계선상에 있는 이 질문에 그는 매우 조각적인 방식으로 답한다. 메트로놈 진자 사이의 공간을 통해 소리의 틈이 침묵인지, 침묵의 틈이 소리인지 질문을 던지고, 침묵의 속도-소리의 속도와 같은 343m/s-를 긴 금속관의 길이로 가시화한다. [벚꽃 떨어지는 소리]라는 제목의 천구조물은 시각적 아름다움 앞에서 사라져버리는 소리, 지각방식에 따라 각자에게 다르게 찾아오는 침묵의 주관성을 촉각적으로 보여준다. 존 케이지의 말처럼 “결코 침묵이란 없다.” 침묵은 멈춤 없는 흐름으로써의 소리에 속한 것이고 ‘소리를 듣다’라는 지각과 마음의 문제에 관한 것이기 때문이다. 김기철이 침묵에 관한 서두라고 소개하는 이번 전시의 신작들은 소리의 결말로써 침묵을 보여주는 것이 아니다. 그는 분명 소리에 관한 또 다른 차원의 이야기를 시작하려는 것이다.

주최ㅣ블루메미술관
기획 및 글ㅣ김은영
교육ㅣ김소영, 이경미
진행ㅣ이우현
사진ㅣ박현욱
디자인ㅣ엄진아

The next story of a sculptor who has worked with sound for 20 Years : Silence
Participating artistㅣKichul Kim

In The Sound of Silence (1965) by Simon & Garfunkel, an American folk rock duo, who were famous in the 1970s, there are paradoxical lyrics as its title indicates: “People talking without speaking, people hearing without listening.” Words and voices are exchanged among people but what part of communication and conversation is sound or silence? If we see silence merely as a pause of sound, silence has no sound. In this song however, silence is the “sound” representing the absence of meaning, the impossibility and death of communication. Artist Kichul Kim also asserts that silence has sound in his exhibition, The Sound of Silence. What is his silence? Why does he address silence? Kim has used sounds as material for his sculptural work for the last 20 years, based on the concepts of “Sound Sculpture”. He has built his own philosophical world while trying to define what sound is. Kim has explored multipronged layers of sound through his oeuvre from his early works representing the physical conditions of sound objectively, such as length and height, volume and color, visually emotional spatial works conjuring up mindscapes with natural sound like the sound of rain he collected, and recent works addressing the semantic origin of sound with human voices. He now poses a question concerning the true nature of sound. His long-standing interest in sound has now brought him to silence, the antithesis of sound. If so, is this exhibition in regard to silence or a state with no sound? After reviewing all aspects of sound, would he like to show how all sounds come out or something unveiled by emptying all sounds? In Silence, a considerably thick book complied with lectures and writing, John Cage uses the example of a man who is in an anechoic room, saying that any attempt to embody silence will fail. Though he is in a room with no background noise where sound has been removed technically, he discovers that total silence is not actually possible. He still hears two sounds; he hears the high sound of his nervous system in operation and the low sound of his blood in circulation. Cage argues that there isn’t ever a moment when life exists without sound. Silence confronts sound but inevitably coexists with it. He adds that there exists no objective silence and silence exists subjectively within sound. Kim’s silence is not an absolute absence of sound but the subjectivity of silence discovered in sound. As the exhibition title implies, Kim claims silence is also sound. It is a sound that is not heard and one would not like to hear. Sound is about hearing, and sound and silence is after all about the mind. He replies to this quasi-philosophical question in a very sculptural manner. His work, Ticktock, made up of five metronomes moving at different angles, questions the space between pendulums making the tick tock sound. A pendulum makes sounds at the two ends to create regular rhythms and return to silence in the space between the two ends. But, sounds from other metronomes pass and infiltrate this space, breaking down the boundary between sound and silence in a metronome. This work has us ask whether silence is at an interstice of sound or sound comes into an interstice of silence. His work 0.035 in which the speed of sound, 343m/s is overlaid with the speed of silence gets rid of the question whether sound makes silence or silence makes sound. This work asserts that sound and silence coalesce in a single experience. In this work he visualizes the time for silence to arrive at the right ear from the left ear with a length of long metal pipe with the same proportions of sound that goes 343 meters for one second. This sculpture, floating horizontally as if enveloping the space where the viewer stands in the form of a full circle, seems to visualize the material condition of silence that it is invisible but exists in the same way in which space encircling us exists, with sound existing three-dimensionally. While the two works mentioned above are about the physical properties of silence overlapping with sound, the work Endless made with a speaker alludes to silence sensed in the way of sound perception. When a viewer steps into the dark room where the sound of waves is heard, the room becomes bright as a light goes on suddenly. The sound of waves never stops, but the viewer experiences silence for a while at the moment when his or her sense of sight gets back on. The sound heard feels blurry or differently when the view becomes clear. Sounds keep surging like waves. Some sounds are heard or others are not in accordance with the mental state of the subject who perceives and accepts them. Kim explains the features of sound are classified into two types; “heard” and “not heard”, in terms of perception and recognition. Sound here is not caught by only ears. That’s why our eyes may disturb our ears from hearing, or sound can be caught by our bodies even if sound is conveyed to our ears. When cherry blossoms fall to the ground, they obviously make sound. Kim clarifies that the reason why we cannot hear the sound is not because it is too weak to hear but because our eyes are caught by pale pink petals falling down in the wind. His work The Sound of Cherry Blossoms showcases sound that disappears due to visual beauty and silent texture that is not heard but we can touch and feel apparently. Unlike light, we more subjectively feel the existence and nonexistence of sound since we hear with our bodies, not by our ears. As John Cage argued, “total silence is not possible”. Silence is a kind of sound as a ceaseless flow and sound is associated with the matter of each individual’s perception and mind. Kim defines new works on display at this exhibition as a prelude on silence, displaying his intent to start new narratives on sound rather than showcase silence as a conclusion of sound.