Contemporary Sculptor Kim Lim at S|2 London

Contemporary Sculptor Kim Lim at S|2 London

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  Kim Lim, Sphinx, 1959

  In one of Kim Lim’s earliest works, Sphinx (1959) , we find three separate wooden components assembled together to create a schematic sphinx-like shape. As an art student travelling back to Singapore, Lim would stop off in various countries in both Europe and the Far East, most notably Greece and Japan. As this sculpture can attest, Lim was fascinated by the ancient world, its cultural relics and its mythologies.

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  Kim Lim, Kudah, 1989

  In Malay, the word ‘kudah’ designates a horse or knight on a chess board. Kudah (1989) displays a horse-like shape and a chess-like varnish yet resists either of these clear-cut categories. The fluted surface of the Rose aurora marble gives the work a sumptuous quality that brings out the majesty of a chess piece.

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  Kim Lim, Column P, 1984

  Column P (1984) bears gentle etchings which cascade down the sculpture and imbue it with a sense of movement. The assemblage of three stone components sitting on top of one another recalls Lim’s works in wood of the early 1960s, but here there is an added dimension of flow and kineticism.

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  Kim Lim, Untitled II, 1993-1997

  Untitled II (1993-7) demonstrates Kim Lim’s endless desire to incorporate different materials into her works in stone. In this work, her chosen material is granite. The fluting and carving of the granite reveals the painstaking process through which Lim shaped and formed her stone sculpture; the way the grooves dance across the surface of the granite seems to point to both a monumentality and a lightness of touch and intervention.

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  Kim Lim, King, Queen, Pawn, 1959

  King, Queen, Pawn (1959) is representative of Kim Lim’s fascination with the game of chess. She claimed that was she was interested ‘not so much [in] playing the game but by the pieces themselves, the moves and the pattern of that across the board’. Three wooden components stand on a base, of different shapes, heights and textures, drawing attention to their poise and splendour.

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  Kim Lim, Spring I-IV, 1996

  Renowned for her printmaking, which ran parallel to her sculptural practice, Kim Lim experimented with other forms of works on paper. In Spring I- IV (1996), Lim cuts and folds her paper with geometric precision so as to create intersecting squares and triangles. These modest works exude a certain serenity akin to geometric abstract painting but with a somewhat more tactile and layered dimension.

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  Kim Lim, Breeze, 1985

  In Breeze (1985) , one finds graded curves in the marble, the top of which has been smoothed out whilst the sides remain rough as if recently mined. This combination of smooth and rough, ‘worked’ and ‘found’ draws out the notion of process, both artistic and geological, palpable on the surface of the sculpture object.

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  Kim Lim, Wind-Stone, 1992

  Carved in the latter stages of Lim’s career, Wind-Stone (1993) evokes the strength of the wind as it strikes through the air. During the 1980s and 1990s, Kim Lim became more interested in natural phenomena and how one might convey the sensation and experience of nature in a material as dense as stone. The specific stone used – Hoptonwood Stone – is dubbed England’s most decorative stone; here, the emphasis is on a much more abstracted grandeur.

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  Kim Lim, Flow, 1982

  Exhibited in London and Singapore in the early 1980s, Flow (1982) is a meditation on the continuation of existence: its undulating carvings pass between the slabs of Portland stone, each at a different height. The incremental step-like quality to this work implies that Lim’s practice is less about objects than it is about spatial experiences.

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  Kim Lim, River Run II, 1996-1997

  One of Kim Lim’s most minimalist works, River Run II lies horizontally with bold engraved lines flowing across it. Like many of Lim’s works of the 1980s and 1990s, such inscriptions evoke the natural world: they allude to a self-regulating cosmic energy and thereby to the Chinese philosophical concept of wu wei (inaction).

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