KIM YUN SHIN

1935 -

A pioneering sculptor whose carved forms hold division and joining in the same body.

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Kim Yun Shin has spent nearly seven decades asking what happens when an artist meets a material without trying to overpower it. Born in Wonsan in 1935, she became part of South Korea’s first generation of women sculptors, studied in Paris, and later left an established teaching career for Argentina, where vast landscapes and dense hardwoods changed the way she worked.

She is best known for wood sculptures cut with a chainsaw and gathered under one lifelong title: Add Two Add One, Divide Two Divide One. The phrase describes a cycle in which separate things join, become one, and divide again. It is both an idea and a working method. Kim follows the grain, bark, weight, and resistance of each piece, leaving cuts that can resemble joints, wounds, branches, architecture, or bodies. Her work entered the Venice Biennale in 2024 and received its most comprehensive museum survey in 2026. The simplest doorway remains the work itself: begin with a cut, then notice what it separates and what it binds together.

Ways Into Kim's Work:

Begin with the cut.
Where has the wood been sliced deeply, grazed lightly, or marked again and again? Notice whether the cuts feel abrupt, measured, rhythmic, or improvised.

Look for the join.
Find the places where separate masses lean together, stack, interlock, or appear to hold one another upright. Does the form feel stable, precarious, or somewhere between?

Let the form change identity.
A sculpture may suggest a tree, a body, a building, a tool, or an unfamiliar creature. Try not to settle on one answer too quickly.

Notice what the wood keeps.
Look for bark, knots, grain, cracks, and irregular edges. Where has Kim transformed the material, and where has she allowed it to remain visibly itself?

Track the rhythm.
In both sculpture and painting, repeated grooves, blocks, stripes, and gestures create movement. Follow one pattern until it changes direction or breaks apart.

Use your body as scale.
Imagine standing beside the work. Would you look down at it, meet it at eye level, or have to move around it to understand how its parts connect?

Looking Now, Looking Later:

Through photographs and video, we can already notice Kim’s silhouettes, repeated cuts, stacked structures, and the contrast between rough bark and exposed interior wood. We can also compare the carved rhythms of her sculpture with the layered lines and colors of her paintings.

A screen cannot fully give us the work’s weight, depth, changing shadows, or relationship to the viewer’s body. A sculpture that looks compact in a photograph may open into separate planes as you walk around it. A narrow cut may turn out to be a deep passage through the form.

These first prompts are for looking now, wherever you are. When the exhibition opens, I’ll share a second set created for looking in person.

Follow along: Instagram / Join the interest list

Looking now:

Trace the sculpture’s outer silhouette before looking at its surface. What holds the form together from a distance?
Choose one repeated feature, such as a notch, diagonal cut, block, or painted line. Where does the repetition become irregular?
Find one place that appears grown and another that appears constructed. What happens where those qualities meet?

What's coming when the exhibition opens:

When the exhibition opens, I’ll offer in-person prompts with Kim Yun Shin's work.

The goal isn't one look — it's real time with the work, noticing what changes, and talking about it afterward.

Stay updated: Instagram / Join the interest list / Upcoming gatherings

A Bridge Through RM's Looking:

RM owns Add Two Add One, Divide Two Divide One 2015-9 and SFMOMA owns Add Two Add One, Divide Two Divide One 1995-532.

Though Kim's work has been referenced in official press releases about the exhibition, there is not yet information on how it will be exhibited, nor with what from SFMOMA's collection. Stay tuned!

Read more: SFMOMA Acquires Wide Range of Artworks...

Kim's Life:

A childhood marked by rupture
Kim was born in Wonsan, in present-day North Korea, in 1935. Her family later resettled in Seoul amid the upheavals of partition and the Korean War. That history should not be used as a shortcut for interpreting every sculpture, but movement, separation, and rebuilding formed the landscape of her early life.

Making room for women in sculpture
Kim trained at Hongik University and studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1964 to 1969. In 1974, she co-founded the Korean Sculptress Association, creating professional support for women entering a field still dominated by men.

She left stability for trees
In 1984, Kim left her teaching career and established life in Seoul after encountering Argentina’s immense landscapes and hardwood trees. The wood was not a picturesque backdrop. Its density demanded new tools, greater physical force, and a more direct method of carving. Ocula

The chainsaw is not simply an emblem of strength
Kim studies a piece of wood before beginning. She has described waiting for her own state and the wood’s condition to align, particularly because working with a chainsaw requires balance among body, machine, and material. The tool’s speed matters, but so do attention and restraint.

Recognition arrived late
A 2023 Seoul museum survey helped bring Kim’s work to renewed international attention. Eight sculptures then appeared in the main exhibition of the 2024 Venice Biennale, followed by her first commercial-gallery representation after nearly seven decades of work and a major 170-work retrospective at Hoam Museum of Art in 2026.

A shelf full of turtles
Kim’s studio also holds turtle figures collected from friends and family across her travels. She has said she loves turtles for their longevity and would like to live forever herself. It is a small detail, but one that fits an artist in her tenth decade who continues to approach her career as unfinished business.

GO DEEPER: WATCH

Hoam Museum of Art’s official interview, produced in connection with the 2026 retrospective, offers the most direct route into Kim’s own account of her life and practice.

GO DEEPER: WATCH

Frieze Masters 2024
A compact visual introduction to her sculpture, painting, chainsaw process, Argentine materials, and return to working in Korea. It connects directly to her Frieze Masters studio presentation.

GO DEEPER: READ/EXPLORE

Leeum Museum of Art리움미술관 홈페이지입니다.

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