The poetics of erosion and impermanence in Kim Jongku's "The Divine Comedy" at AP Gallery

 Artist Kim Jongku, "The Divine Comedy" exhibition photo courtesy of AP Space

RUST AND RESONANCE

Kim Jongku

On view until May 10 AP SPACE  GALLERY 

By COCO DOLLE April 29, 2025

In Kim Jongku’s The Divine Comedy, Dante’s Alighieri’s epic poem is reimagined in oxidized steel. Here Italien grand frescoes and gold-leafed heavens are substituted with iron powder and rusted metals to convey a poetics of erosion, sublimizing the weight of material memory. For Jongku, paradise is not something you ascended into—it is something you arrived at by surrendering to time.

Known for his masterful manipulation of metal, calligraphic compositions in iron powder, and meditations on decay and impermanence, Jongku had long blurred the lines between installation, painting, and sculpture. In The Divine Comedy, he distilled decades of conceptual practice into a powerful, three-part journey that mirrored Dante’s Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, unpacking them through matter rather than metaphor.

 Artist Kim Jongku, "The Divine Comedy" exhibition photo courtesy of AP Space

The journey began with Inferno, which in Jongku’s hands was not hell as mythology—it was fractured. The room pulse with a low vibration, emanating from large-scale panels and suspended rusted forms that felt somewhere between ruin and ritual. The surfaces are raw, cracked, oxidized with a deliberate patience that forces viewers to confront time’s violent touch, surrendering into a kind of haunted elegance. These are not violent gestures. They are only remembrances.

Artist Kim Jongku, "The Divine Comedy" exhibition photo courtesy of AP Space

In Purgatorio, the exhibition shifts into liminality. Materials become less jagged, and space enter the conversation. The works remains industrial, still worn, but they begin to speak of possibility. Edges softened. Forms stretched, almost reaching. The pieces feel like they are in the process of healing. This is not purification in the religious sense, but in the emotional one—where dissonance began to hum with coherence, however temporary.

And then there was Paradiso—a kind of peace, but not perfection. Jongku did not romanticize transcendence. His heaven is not golden. It is quiet. Spacious. Balanced. The rust remains —nothing is erased—but it is held differently. Harmonized. It offers a resolution that do not claim finality, only a momentary alignment between spirit and structure.

The conceptual duality that binds the entire exhibition—Rust and Resonance—elevates it beyond aesthetic poetry and into a deeper metaphysical inquiry.

Rust, in this context, is not just visual—it is existential. It marks time’s passage but also its teachings. It suggests that nothing truly disappeared; it simply transformed. Jongku’s mastery lay in his ability to let the material speak its own truth. It felt as though these pieces were not made—they were uncovered.

Resonance is the invisible twin. It is what lingered after one left a room—the emotional imprint of a form once seen or a texture once felt. Jongku’s works did not shout. They echoed. They asked for attention, not interpretation. And when given time, they opened. Slowly. Like grief. Or forgiveness.

Artist Kim Jongku, "The Divine Comedy" exhibition photo courtesy of AP Space

Artist Kim Jongku, "The Divine Comedy" exhibition photo courtesy of AP Space

There is a distinctly Korean sensibility woven throughout the show—not just in Jongku’s philosophical approach to impermanence, but in his fusion of Eastern thought and contemporary minimalism. The exhibition nodds to wabi-sabi, to Buddhist impermanence, to industrial detritus reimagined as sacred relic.

The curation at AP SPACE deserves recognition. The installation was as much about space as it was about sculpture. The light in the gallery, diffused and unintrusive, transformed the works, casting shadows that became part of the narrative.

It was rare to find an exhibition that managed to feel both ancient and contemporary, personal and universal. But The Divine Comedy achieved that paradox with grace. It did not promise redemption. It promised recognition—that the journey through fragmentation, uncertainty, and eventual calm was not only human, but shared.

In a time when much of contemporary art chased spectacle, Kim Jongku offers something more enduring: a meditative presence. His work is an invitation—to slow down, to witness transformation, and to find the sublime not in escape, but in erosion. WM