Notes on Kim Lim

The ex­hib­i­tion Daiga Grant­ina. Notes on Kim Lim traces the work of the Singa­por­ean-Brit­ish artist Kim Lim (1936 – 1997) in a con­tem­por­ary and as­so­ci­at­ive ex­plor­a­tion, pla­cing her œuvre in dia­logue with the sculp­tures of the Latvi­an artist Daiga Grant­ina (*1985). Kim Lim's work in­cludes ab­stract sculp­tures in wood and stone as well as works on paper that re­flect on the re­la­tion­ship between art and nature. Daiga Grantiņa uses a wide range of every­day ma­ter­i­als in her prac­tice, from the syn­thet­ic to the or­gan­ic, often re­vers­ing and tran­scend­ing the bound­ar­ies of their tra­di­tion­al use to cre­ate as­so­ci­at­ive form­a­tions. There are strik­ing sim­il­ar­it­ies and par­al­lels between Daiga Grant­ina's and Kim Lim's sculp­tures, par­tic­u­larly in terms of their mut­ab­il­ity and elasti­city, which are con­stitutive for both artists. At the same time, the dif­fer­ences between the works be­come ap­par­ent, cre­at­ing an ef­fect­ive ten­sion.

Being the first present­a­tion of Kim Lim's work in Switzer­land, the ex­hib­i­tion is not in­ten­ded to be a ret­ro­spect­ive, but rather looks at her work from an artist­ic per­spect­ive. The ‘notes’ on Lim's work will be con­tin­ued in an artist pub­lic­a­tion through the eyes of the pho­to­graph­er Katal­in Deér (*1965, Palo Alto, Cali­for­nia, USA, lives and works in St. Gal­len, CH) and the poet Ilma Rak­usa (*1946, Rimavská So­bota, Czechoslov­akia, lives and works in Zurich, CH). The book un­der­stands it­self as a po­et­ic ex­ten­sion of the ex­hib­i­tion and is de­signed by the Parisi­an graph­ic artist Toan Vu-Huu.

The book launch will take place on 4 May 2025 as part of a day pro­gramme at the Kun­st­mu­seum Ap­pen­zell. On the same oc­ca­sion, sound artist and com­poser Anna Za­radny (*1977, Szcze­cin, PL, lives and works in Warsaw, PL) will con­trib­ute her sonic ‘note’ to the ex­hib­i­tion.

Cur­ated by Daiga Grant­ina and Stefanie Gschwend

Kim Lim (1936 – 1997, Singa­pore) de­voted her­self to ab­stract sculp­ture for more than four dec­ades, using wood, stone and in­dus­tri­al ma­ter­i­als. In par­al­lel to her sculp­tur­al work, she pur­sued print­mak­ing and draw­ing through­out her ca­reer. The uni­fy­ing ele­ment across the dif­fer­ent peri­ods of her work is Lim's en­dur­ing in­terest in light, space and rhythm.

Lim spent much of her early child­hood in Pen­ang and Malacca, MYS. At the age of 18, she moved to Lon­don and stud­ied wood­carving at Saint Mar­tin's School of Art, Lon­don, UK (1954 – 1956). She then con­cen­trated on print­mak­ing at the Slade School of Art, Lon­don, UK gradu­at­ing in 1960. Her first ret­ro­spect­ive took place in 1979 at the Round­house Gal­lery in Lon­don, UK in 1995 she showed her work at the York­shire Sculp­ture Park, UK and in 1999 at the Singa­pore Art Mu­seum, SGP, but it is only re­cently that her work has at­trac­ted in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion. In 2018, the first major solo ex­hib­i­tion Kim Lim: Sculpt­ing Light took place at STPI, Singa­pore, SGP. This was fol­lowed by the sur­vey show Kim Lim: Carving and Print­ing at the Tate Bri­tain, Lon­don, UK (2020) and most re­cently the ret­ro­spect­ive Kim Lim. The Space Between at the Na­tion­al Gal­lery Singa­pore, SGP (2024/25). Group ex­hib­i­tions in­clude Break­ing The Mould: Sculp­ture by Women since 1945, York­shire Sculp­ture Park, UK (2020); Min­im­al­ism: Space. Light. Ob­ject, Na­tion­al Gal­lery Singa­pore, SGP (2018); Speech Acts: Re­flec­tion-Ima­gin­a­tion-Re­pe­ti­tion, Manchester Art Gal­lery, UK (2018).

Lim's work res­ists both the mod­ern­ist uni­ver­sal­isms of Euro­centric art his­tory and an es­sen­tial­ist cat­egor­isa­tion of her prac­tice with­in a pan-Asian cul­tur­al space. Through ex­tens­ive travels to Italy, Cam­bod­ia, India, Japan and Egypt, she has broadened her stud­ies and co­ordin­ated a visu­al vocab­u­lary for her own prac­tice from a mul­tiple spa­tio-tem­por­al field of an­cient and con­tem­por­ary sculp­tur­al works. Her gram­mar de­rives less from a cla­ri­fic­a­tion of ab­stract forms than from a phys­ic­al en­counter with sculp­tures in their con­crete sur­round­ings.

Daiga Grant­ina (*1985, Sal­dus, Latvia lives and works in Paris, France) ex­plores the re­la­tion­ships between ma­ter­i­als, ges­tures and space in her sculp­tures. Her ab­stract vocab­u­lary is based on bod­ies, land­scapes and the or­gan­ic and con­fronts syn­thet­ic ma­ter­i­als with as­so­ci­at­ive power.

Grant­ina stud­ied at the Hoch­schule für bildende Kün­ste in Ham­burg, DE and at the Akademie der bildenden Kün­ste in Vi­enna, AUT.

Her solo ex­hib­i­tions were Four Sides of a Shad­ow at Z33 House for Con­tem­por­ary Art, Design and Ar­chi­tec­ture, Has­selt, BEL (2024), Lauka telpa at Riga Bourse Mu­seum, Riga, LV (2022), Moth Moth­ers at Palace En­ter­prise, Copen­ha­gen, DK (2022), Atem, Lehm ‘Fi­ato, Ar­gil­la’ at GAMeC, Ber­ga­mo, IT (2021); Learn­ing From Feath­ers at Liebaert Pro­jects, Kortrijk, BE (2021); Temples at Emal­in, Lon­don, UK (2021); What Eats Around It­self at the New Mu­seum, New York, US (2020), Saules Suns for the Latvi­an Pa­vil­ion at the 58. Venice Bi­en­nale, IT (2019), Toll at Pal­ais de Tokyo, Paris, FR (2018), Pil­lars Slid­ing off Coat-ee at Kun­stver­ein Ham­burg, DE (2017) and Lauka telpa at kim? Con­tem­por­ary Art Centre, Riga, LV (2016). Her works have been in group ex­hib­i­tions at the Fok­sal Gal­lery Found­a­tion, Warsaw, PL (2024), Kun­stver­ein Göt­tin­gen, DE (2023), Kun­st­mu­seum Bern, CH (2020), the Busan Bi­en­nale, Yeong­do Mu­seum of Con­tem­por­ary Art, Busan, KR (2020), Galer­ie Joseph Tang, Paris, FR (2019), Balt­ic Tri­en­ni­al 13, Riga, LV (2018) Con­tem­por­ary Art Centre, Vil­ni­us, LT (2018), Musée d'Orsay, Paris, FR (2018), Kun­sthalle Mainz, DE (2017), Kun­sthaus Bre­genz, AUT (2016) and Ber­gen Kun­sthall, NO (2016).

Bridges / Wings

Kim Lim's at­ten­tion to curves, lines and sur­faces, to the rhythm of struc­ture and the re­la­tion­ship of sculp­ture to space, is already evid­ent in this first ex­hib­i­tion space. The geo­met­ric forms of the two works Link I (1975) and Brig­de II (1976) re­veal the work­ing and cre­ation pro­cesses of the sculp­tures. The stack­ing and lay­er­ing, as well as the jux­ta­pos­i­tion of edged wood, cre­ate a struc­ture that is not stat­ic, but leaves open the pos­sib­il­ity of dif­fer­ent con­stel­la­tions. In the 1970s, Lim be­came in­creas­ingly in­ter­ested in the ten­sion between ver­tic­als, ho­ri­zont­als and angles. Light also be­came an im­port­ant ele­ment in the struc­ture of the work, mak­ing it more ‘phys­ic­al’ and ‘com­pre­hens­ible’, as Lim ex­pressed it.

These works are com­mit­ted to a min­im­al­ism that de­fies art-his­tor­ic­al cat­egor­isa­tion and in­stead con­nects with the sym­bol­ic, seek­ing to evoke the pres­ence of some­thing ab­sent. The titles of the sculp­tures refer to a uni­fy­ing ele­ment and speak of the re­la­tion­ships between the forms. This as­pect is also ap­par­ent in Daiga Grant­ina's work Sar­ras­vati (2020), which rises up into the space as a ges­ture. Made of fab­ric, weave, wood and sil­ic­one, the work in­ev­it­ably evokes the flight and mi­gra­tion of birds, whose move­ment con­nects dif­fer­ent spheres to each other through their move­ment. The ref­er­ence to birds can also be found in the title of the work, which refers to the In­di­an god­dess Saras­vati and her com­pan­ion an­im­al, the goose, the swan or the pea­cock. The icon­o­graphy shows the deity in the centre of a lake, which is in­ter­preted as a sym­bol of prim­or­di­al water and the be­gin­ning of cre­ation, among other things.

The works of both artists are rooted in a po­ten­tial for trans­form­a­tion and par­al­lels can be found in the un­der­stand­ing of the bridging func­tion of im­ages, which me­di­ate between the most di­verse cul­tures, both his­tor­ic­ally and spa­tially dis­tant from each other.

Water / Wind

Flow­ing water seem very calm. Yet many cubic metres of water flow over the rock every second, si­lently dig­ging fur­rows into its in­teri­or. The river rises, in­tan­gible lines ap­pear and dis­ap­pear in the shim­mer­ing mass of water, the river sinks, re­leas­ing the formed bod­ies of the stones into the air, where some of their parts dry out.

In the 1980s, Kim Lim turned her at­ten­tion in­creas­ingly to nat­ur­al forms. At the same time, she began to work in stone and marble. The stat­ic prop­er­ties of the ma­ter­i­al con­tras­ted with the dy­nam­ic rhythms of or­gan­ic forms, which the artist saw as a pro­duct­ive field of ten­sion and a start­ing point for her stone sculp­tures. In many works, the marble was worked with in­cised lines and tex­tures so that the stone ap­peared to have been shaped by the ele­ments. With simple, slightly curved lines that Lim cut into the stone, she sug­ges­ted move­ment and evoked water or wind. She tried to give the ma­ter­i­al a light­ness and soft­ness, as ex­em­pli­fied in Source 2 (1988). Wind Stone (1992) is flat­ter. She cut a Hop­ton­wood stone evenly so that the volume looks more like a draw­ing than a solid form.

In Daiga Grant­ina's new work Parce que (2024), curved, dark wooden ele­ments run along the walls like a spa­tial score. As the eye fol­lows the line of the com­pos­i­tion, it forms a sound wave and spreads in­vis­ibly across the room. In a sense, the wooden wedges cre­ate an in­ver­sion of Lim's carved stones, trans­form­ing neg­at­ive space into form. Their black col­our ab­sorbs the light, ac­cen­tu­at­ing the con­tours and mak­ing the ele­ments ap­pear like shad­ows on the wall. It is as if the wood is cut­ting into the volume of the ex­hib­i­tion space, carving out the ex­ist­ing ma­ter­i­al. Grant­ina en­ables the two artist­ic res­on­ance spaces to be con­nec­ted, sug­gest­ing the ex­ist­ence of a flow of en­ergy that per­meates all things.

Bod­ies of Mat­ter

In her sculp­tures, Daiga Grant­ina sed­i­ments or­gan­ic and syn­thet­ic ma­ter­i­als into form com­plex, un­stable bod­ies. In Which Part of the Body (after Orta) (2022), an amorph­ous sil­ic­one sur­face curves around it­self and rests on a painted wooden sur­face. In Grant­ina's work, the ma­ter­i­al ex­per­i­ments func­tion as meta­bol­ic or­gans that build up and break down the sculp­tur­al body. The flat piece of wood and the amorph­ous sil­ic­one ab­sorb ele­ments of other ma­ter­i­als. The wood is soaked in ink on one side, while the sil­ic­one con­tains struc­tures of fab­ric and traces of pig­ment. The sil­ic­one seems to be the shed skin of a former phys­ic­al state and is tem­por­ar­ily given a new body in in­de­pend­ent pro­cesses of move­ment and ac­tion.

The meet­ing of the ma­ter­i­als is not co­in­cid­ent­al, but rather a mat­ter of re­la­tion­ships for which Grant­ina finds mod­els in the plant world. The work, cre­ated on Lake Orta in north­ern Italy, seems to fol­low an ana­tom­ic­al prin­ciple of the sym­bi­ot­ic life forms of fungi and algae, which sta­bil­ise as lichens to form a mor­pho­lo­gic­al unit. At the same time, the ma­ter­i­al and artist­ic pro­cesses in the sculp­tures come to a stand­still. Daiga Grant­ina sees this mo­ment as co-de­term­ined by her sculp­ture. An in­de­pend­ent phys­ic­al­ity is at­trib­uted to the artist­ic ma­ter­i­al, to which the artist refers. The title of her work raises the ques­tion of the di­men­sions to which human and non-human bod­ies are linked.

Early in her prac­tice, Lim moved from fig­ur­at­ive works to an in­terest in in-between spaces and ele­ment­ary forms. In Kiss (1959), Kim Lim chisels two heads, one round and one elong­ated, out of a Port­land stone. The filled-in space in between them holds the two heads in ten­sion as they kiss. In their elab­or­a­tion, the fig­ur­at­ive faces re­main per­man­ent and in­creas­ingly dis­solve into the tool marks and the rough stone. As a fig­ur­at­ive form, the di­men­sion of Ring (1972) re­mains un­clear in re­la­tion to the human body. It is only through the grind­ing of the sur­face in tight cir­cu­lar move­ments that the ges­tur­al di­men­sion of a phys­ic­ally strenu­ous work is im­prin­ted in the form of a curl­ing trace.

Elasti­city

Through­out the 1960s and 70s, Kim Lim cre­ated her sculp­tures mainly in basic rhythmic forms, in which each ele­ment forms a bal­anced whole and is brought into equi­lib­ri­um. Twice (1966) ex­em­pli­fies these char­ac­ter­ist­ics and demon­strates the artist's in­terest in bal­ance, col­our, form and her concept of ‘less elab­or­a­tion and more strength’. In the work, a ver­tic­al form is du­plic­ated and placed ho­ri­zont­ally. The mono­chrome brass forms are moun­ted on a nar­row base that defines their re­la­tion­ship and aligns them with their ar­chi­tec­tur­al sur­round­ings. They thus ap­pear as neg­at­ive spaces of large hemi­spher­ic­al forms that slip away into an ima­gin­ary, di­men­sion­less space. Thereby the basic forms them­selves take on fluid and elast­ic qual­it­ies.

Ver­sat­il­ity and elasti­city are char­ac­ter­ist­ic and con­stitutive of the artist­ic prac­tices of Kim Lim and Daiga Grant­ina. Both artists seem to be less con­cerned with rep­res­ent­ing nature than with re­pro­du­cing its act­ive forces without or­gan­ising them. In their sculp­tur­al trans­la­tion into new and free forms, the artists find a prox­im­ity to un­avail­able dy­nam­ics. Lim with her own basic ele­ments, Grant­ina in the trans­form­a­tion of her source ma­ter­i­al.

Daiga Grant­ina sees her works as me­di­at­ors between earthly and cos­mic spaces that re­quire an elasti­city of our ima­gin­a­tion and feel­ing. Grant­ina draws in­spir­a­tion for the de­vel­op­ment of her ma­ter­i­al pro­cesses from the nu­mer­ous ad­apt­ive prop­er­ties of bio­lo­gic­al life, such as co­ex­ist­ence and self-rep­lic­a­tion. In Kūka (2021), the ma­ter­i­als strive in all dir­ec­tions. The form of an ab­strac­ted pla­centa, made up of square fields of densely ar­ranged bird feath­ers, is the work's en­rap­tured centre. For the title, Grant­ina chose the Latvi­an name of the organ, which is the only one in the human body that can be formed after birth, which sup­plies grow­ing foetuses with nu­tri­ents and oxy­gen. The organ marks the co­ex­ist­ence of two liv­ing be­ings and is then re­jec­ted again. Here, elasti­city re­mains not merely a sculp­tur­al pos­sib­il­ity of tak­ing shape, but takes on a form-giv­ing char­ac­ter that leaves both in­di­vidu­als equally mod­i­fied.

Light

In 1977, Kim Lim ex­hib­ited In­ter­vals I – part 1 (1973) at the Hay­ward An­nu­al Ex­hib­i­tion in Lon­don. Among 14 male ex­hib­it­ors, Lim was the only woman and non-white per­son. The fol­low­ing year, in an at­tempt to re­dress this glar­ing im­bal­ance, the Hay­ward ap­poin­ted Kim Lim to its se­lec­tion com­mit­tee of five fe­male artists. It was a pivotal mo­ment: for the first time, a major Brit­ish in­sti­tu­tion showed an ex­hib­i­tion fea­tur­ing mainly women.

In notes on In­ter­vals, which Kim Lim wrote for the Tate Gal­lery in March 1977, she ex­plained that these ver­tic­al works, which open up a space between them when angled against a wall, put the in­cid­ence of light at the centre of her in­terest. ‘Some­times using light to echo the forms by shad­ows – mul­tiply­ing the rhythm and chan­ging it ac­cord­ing to the vary­ing light, light height­en­ing in the sense of space being trapped/squeezed’. The light be­comes part of the work, trans­form­ing the idea of the sculp­ture into a phys­ic­al en­tity. The works re­main por­ous as a mem­brane for chan­ging light con­di­tions, like flags that give visu­al form to an in­vis­ible move­ment of air.

The ques­tion of the sculp­tur­al prop­er­ties of light de­veloped in Daiga Grant­ina's work from earli­er ex­plor­a­tions in ex­per­i­ment­al film. She be­came in­creas­ingly in­ter­ested in the space between the pro­ject­or and the screen, into which she in­ser­ted re­flect­ive, sculp­tur­al bod­ies. They seem to ma­ter­i­al­ise the ex­pans­ive light cone of the pro­jec­tion at cer­tain points and trans­late it chro­mat­ic­ally in their col­our. The vis­ib­il­ity and col­our­ful­ness of the sculp­tures are thus mod­al­it­ies of a space of light that sur­rounds everything. Grant­ina's works re­mind us that works of art al­ways re­main part of a col­our spec­trum that en­com­passes the en­tire vis­ible world. In Blue Sun (2022), the source of light is at the centre. The sun, or plur­al suns, form an ima­gin­ary ho­ri­zon for the ex­hib­i­tion space that knows no top or bot­tom. As if it were the scene of a cos­mo­lo­gic­al dawn, it opens up as a place and mo­ment for crys­tal­lising pos­sib­il­it­ies.

Birds / Snakes

This room brings to­geth­er works that con­nect with vari­ous spheres such as the realms of water, earth and air as well as with an­im­al as­so­ci­ations that re­late to the ele­ments or other worlds through their sym­bol­ism. Par­al­lels can also be re­cog­nised in the in­terest in the es­sence of geo­metry, whereby the form does not stand on its own, but merges with flow­ing and nature-re­lated ele­ments.

Use of a Comb (2021) con­sists of shim­mer­ing feath­ers that Daiga Grant­ina has ap­plied tightly to squares of fab­ric. De­pend­ing on the angle from which they are viewed, they ap­pear in dif­fer­ent hues of rich green, be­guil­ing blue, deep black or shaded brown. At the upper edge of the work, she ap­plied thin, over­lap­ping lay­ers of col­our to re­cre­ate the al­most hal­lu­cino­gen­ic ef­fect of the feath­ers – the brush as an ex­ten­sion of the feath­er hairs. The work is un­usu­ally geo­met­ric for the artist, who tends to work with an or­gan­ic and phys­ic­al vocab­u­lary of form. The squares have be­come the inner or­gan­isa­tion of the work, cap­able of con­vey­ing both col­our and mean­ing and be­com­ing the quiet sound of her pro­cess.

Kim Lim's Spir­al II (1983) con­sists of seven Port­land stones ar­ranged in an in­com­plete circle. Each stone bears two grooved lines, al­lud­ing to an­oth­er series of in­ter­rup­ted circles. One is temp­ted to re­arrange and re­align the pieces – at least in one's mind – either to com­plete the circle by join­ing the slabs or to ex­tend it by in­creas­ing the dis­tance between the in­di­vidu­al pieces. The heights of the ele­ments dif­fer slightly, cre­at­ing an un­du­lat­ing or wind­ing move­ment as the eye glides over the work. The work ex­ists in three vari­ations, in­clud­ing an out­door ver­sion and one that is not ar­ranged in a spir­al but as a wavy line and is called Naga. It re­mains un­clear wheth­er these are the same stones that sug­gest a snake when re­arranged. In Hindu myth­o­logy, Nagas are semi-di­vine be­ings, half human, half cobra, who are often as­so­ci­ated with guard­ing treas­ure.

Branches turned sil­ver (2022) was cre­ated on a winter's day by the River Aare in Bern, when the light made the branches of the trees ap­pear sil­very grey. The sculp­ture is made of ply­wood that has been cut and stacked and painted with dif­fer­ent lay­ers of col­our. The ma­ter­i­al and col­our have change­able prop­er­ties and cre­ate the im­pres­sion of a fig­ure emer­ging from the water. The wooden ob­ject ap­pears ar­cha­ic and raw, its edges are un­fin­ished and frayed, mak­ing its sur­face tan­gible as an am­bi­val­ent phe­nomen­on between in­side and out­side.

Prox­im­ity / Dis­tance

In go the dis­tance (2024), branches lose their di­men­sion as frag­ments of a co­her­ent or­gan­ism and ap­pear to be vari­ations of other works by Daiga Grant­ina in a dif­fer­ent scale. The branches spon­tan­eously change dir­ec­tion as they make their way through the dim space, as if an ex­pans­ive en­ergy were being dis­charged in loc­al­ised flashes of light. The sil­ver col­our com­pletes their sur­face and makes them per­meable to chan­ging light con­di­tions. In this way, they refer more to their im­me­di­ate sur­round­ings rather than re­veal­ing their inner nature.

In the 1990s, Kim Lim in­creas­ingly en­deav­oured to lend the stone a light­ness and soft­ness, as in Syn­co­pa­tion No. 2 (1995), where a large piece of slate was worked with reg­u­lar cuts so that it re­sembled a draw­ing rather than a solid form. The fili­gree re­mov­al of the slate cre­ates a lin­ear neg­at­ive space. Kim Lim here does not seem to be in­ter­ested in the re­pe­ti­tion of these seem­ingly end­less lines, but rather in the con­crete break­ing point of the space in between, where dif­fer­ent par­al­lel lin­ear spaces col­lide. Con­tinu­ity is not achieved through the lin­ear, but in the sim­il­ar­ity of the inner re­la­tion­ships of dif­fer­ent lin­ear zones.

The two artists' works in this space are equally frag­men­ted, em­phas­ising their fra­gil­ity and re­veal­ing a spon­tan­eous close­ness in their tan­gible sim­il­ar­it­ies.

Body / Shell

Grant­ina's large-scale sculp­tur­al as­semblage Joana's Joy (2024) is in­spired by the nat­ur­al world and is re­min­is­cent of ve­get­a­tion and bod­ies. The sculp­ture uses syn­thet­ic ma­ter­i­als that have dy­nam­ic and change­able qual­it­ies, link­ing to­geth­er and cre­at­ing flow­ing trans­itions. Joana's Joy cre­ates a fold­ing and cyc­lic­al move­ment that cre­ates its own space and at the same time forms a fig­ure. It acts as a dwell­ing and a pro­tect­ive shell. The amorph­ous struc­ture ex­udes vi­tal­ity and a strong phys­ic­al pres­ence, while at the same time ap­pear­ing vul­ner­able and eph­em­er­al.

The theme of space is re­flec­ted in Kim Lim’s three-di­men­sion­al and graph­ic works. We see struc­tures that look like ar­chi­tec­ture or shells, sculp­tures or sym­bols. Lim's in­terest in the visu­al lan­guages of an­cient civil­isa­tions and the mean­ing of im­ages that un­der­lie the vari­ous cul­tures of the world is evid­ent through­out.

Grant­ina's work con­nects not only with the fluid and nature-based as­pects of Kim Lim's work, but also in the per­cep­tion of struc­tures that exist as hy­brids between body and space. While Grant­ina's work relates more dir­ectly to the body, Lim, whose work is more spa­tial and nature-based, cre­ates this through the move­ment and rhythm in­her­ent in her struc­tures.

Vi­bra­tion

The ex­tens­ive travels Kim Lim un­der­took to­geth­er with her hus­band Wil­li­am Turn­bull from 1962 on­wards to Italy, Cam­bod­ia, India, Japan and Egypt that took the artist to ar­chae­olo­gic­al ex­cav­a­tion sites, mu­seums and an­cient cul­tur­al spaces. Place names and names of myth­o­lo­gic­al fig­ures ap­pear as ref­er­ences in the titles of many of Lim's works. The early work Nar­cissus (1959) is a sculp­ture con­sist­ing of two bronze pieces moun­ted on, and re­flec­ted in, a black marble slab. The in­di­vidu­al ele­ments evoke the in­teri­or view of a body, of in­ter­con­nec­ted or­gans that form volumes, stretch, swell and taper.

In her early work, Kim Lim was in­ter­ested in ele­ments that she placed as forms in spa­tial con­texts in order to ac­tiv­ate the ten­sion between them as space. In Nar­cissus, the in­creased at­ten­tion to the space between the in­di­vidu­al ele­ments of a sculp­ture is evid­ent. The artist em­phas­ised her ap­proach in which ‘some­times using space / in­ter­vals / si­lences to punc­tu­ate the struc­ture; some­times using forms in re­pe­ti­tion to build up a rhythm in order to achieve some kind of res­on­ance / vi­bra­tion’.

The vi­bra­tion that Kim Lim sought in her spa­tial ex­plor­a­tion also seems to crys­tal­lise in her in­terest in water sur­faces in the print series of the 1980s. The graph­ic ele­ment of her prints are form­al­ised in­ter­vals of a water sur­face moved by waves and vi­brat­ing in the gleam­ing sun­light.

Daiga Grant­ina's works are equally in­formed by the ef­fects of ma­ter­i­al sur­faces and their me­di­al pos­sib­il­it­ies. Dur­ing a stay at Lake Orta in Italy, she was in­spired by the lake's large body of water, which in quiet mo­ments re­flects the pre-alpine sur­round­ings al­most in­dis­tin­guish­ably in its sur­face. Grant­ina is less in­ter­ested in the clear re­flec­tion of the sur­round­ings than in situ­ations that dis­solve the mir­ror image into a mass of move­ment and re­flec­tions. Echoes of fish, birds, in­sects and boats mov­ing in and on the water, ex­pand­ing in a ring. The wind that lifts and ruffles the water. Float­ing wood, washed-out leaves and plastic debris com­bine with the re­flec­ted col­ours of the sky. Like the self-image of Nar­cissus, which dis­ap­pears the mo­ment his tears fall into the water, the clear image of the sur­round­ings is frayed into glisten­ing points of light and rip­pling shades of col­our. The sur­face of the water does not lose its re­flect­ive func­tion in its vi­bra­tion, but is trans­formed into a com­plex of spread­ing de­tails.

Move­ment / Flow

The space is in­hab­ited by a sculp­ture that os­cil­lates between geo­met­ric and or­gan­ic form and can be walked through. Daiga Grant­ina's work rhythmises the ex­ist­ing ar­chi­tec­ture through its struc­ture, which is char­ac­ter­ised by buckled struts, cre­at­ing a ten­sion between body, space and sculp­ture. Cling­ing, crav­ing (2022) sim­ul­tan­eously cre­ates both a space and a non­space. The form evokes as­so­ci­ations of dwell­ing, linked to im­ages of in­tim­ate spa­ti­al­ity, while the col­lapsed centres, in con­trast, con­vey a sense of in­stabil­ity. The space ap­pears elast­ic and dy­nam­ic, as if it could ex­pand and con­tract again, blur­ring the con­trast between in­side and out­side. Move­ment is also sug­ges­ted by the paint, which be­haves like water on the sur­face. The layer of col­our cov­ers the metal like a mem­brane and dis­solves the in­dus­tri­al ef­fect in a paint­erly ges­ture.

Free Forms (1968/69) are min­im­al­ist-look­ing etch­ings of float­ing forms in which Kim Lim ex­plores en­er­gies, fluid­ity, move­ment and the big bang. The line is con­ceived in a con­stantly re­peat­ing move­ment and the over­lap­ping of lines. Study for Water Piece (1979) stacks five curved pools of water on top of each other in a con­tinu­ation of the forms and em­phas­isa­tions of the etch­ings. Lim was con­cerned with the rhythms of life, with a par­tic­u­lar in­terest in the ele­ments of water, air and the shift­ing qual­ity of light. As in the work Spir­al II (Room 6), there are sev­er­al vari­ations of water basins in dif­fer­ent ma­ter­i­als and sizes. Three basins are on dis­play: one made of wood, an­oth­er made of plaster, and one made of bronze that can be filled with water.

Form­a­tion / Trans­form­a­tion

The ar­tic­u­la­tion of col­our and form in dif­fer­ent media in­ter­acts with the mut­ab­il­ity of the sculp­tures, which by their very nature cre­ate places of trans­form­a­tion.

Cen­taur I (1963) is a con­trast­ing and strik­ing blue fig­ure that em­phas­ises the ef­fect of col­our in sculp­ture. The work is re­min­is­cent of a pa­per­cut and, des­pite its size, has a graph­ic qual­ity. In the title, the artist refers to the cen­taurs, who, as myth­o­lo­gic­al hy­brid creatures and per­son­i­fic­a­tions of the storm, have an in­her­ent ca­pa­city for meta­morph­os­is.

Swal­lows (2022) by Daiga Grant­ina, like Kim Lim's two works Un­titled (1963) as well as Minus 1 and Minus 2 (1966), is in­deed change­able and can be shown in dif­fer­ent con­fig­ur­a­tions. Swal­lows is com­posed of six wing-like ele­ments that can form a circle or a freer shape, and vary in tones from or­ange to green. It has an inner and an outer ring of col­our. The artist as­so­ci­ates the sculp­ture with a sun­di­al, which she can ar­range in dif­fer­ent ways de­pend­ing on the time and place. All these sculp­tures re­veal not only their own form, but also the space that sur­rounds them. In this way, the in­di­vidu­al ele­ments of Lim's works seem to con­tain the space in between and are echoed in a con­crete ges­ture of hold­ing.

In con­trast to her other sculp­tures, which un­fold flu­idly into the space or oc­cupy it as or­gan­ic struc­tures, in Wide Tri­angle (2024) Grant­ina has de­veloped the form on the flat sur­face. In their raw­ness, the im­per­fect tri­angles look like mock-ups whose sur­faces re­flect or ab­sorb sun­light to vary­ing de­grees, from clear plastic to vari­ous fab­rics. Al­though the sculp­tures re­semble ma­ter­i­al tests, they have an arte­fac­tu­al pres­ence and are re­min­is­cent of a portal that, like a trans­ition­al ele­ment, leads to an­oth­er world or an­oth­er emo­tion­al state.

Time / In­ter­val

Through­out her ca­reer and her cyc­lic­al work­ing meth­od, Kim Lim has de­veloped her prints and sculp­tures in par­al­lel, ex­plor­ing ana­logue in­terests in space, in­ter­vals and pauses. Thus the aus­tere geo­met­ric forms of the Lad­der series (1972) are found in the painted wooden struc­tures of In­ter­vals (1973). The wood­cuts A minor (1979) re­veal the draw­ings of the stone from her sculp­tures of the 1970s and the graph­ic treat­ment of slate pan­els in the 1990s. The sculp­tur­al qual­it­ies in the carving, hol­low­ing and mark­ing of sur­faces are as evid­ent as a sens­ib­il­ity in her prints. Lim sees a dif­fer­ence in the dur­a­tion of the work­ing pro­cesses. Print­ing tech­niques allow for quick­er feed­back on ideas of form than the time-con­sum­ing pro­cess of work­ing with stone and wood.

In her print series Time Shift (1993), Kim Lim spe­cific­ally ad­dresses the tem­por­al di­men­sion of her artist­ic prac­tice, which spans vari­ous time re­gisters. In it, tem­por­al dif­fer­ences are ex­plored with in a visu­al trans­la­tion in col­our print. The chro­mat­ic sub­tlety of the prin­ted col­our ele­ments marks dif­fer­ences in light, which are con­densed in their trans­par­ent over­lays. Lim finds in­spir­a­tion for the geo­met­ric form of the ele­ments in listen­ing to con­tem­por­ary mu­sic­al forms, in which in­ter­vals of the same sound are ar­ranged re­pet­it­ively. The in­di­vidu­al form rhythmises the graph­ic space, which for Kim Lim be­comes a con­crete phys­ic­al ex­per­i­ence.

With the numbered series Temple (2000 – 2022), Daiga Grant­ina turns away from her con­gealed and float­ing form com­plexes to de­vel­op a sculp­tur­ally more subtle po­et­ics. The artist uses ir­reg­u­lar tri­angles as geo­met­ric lenses and struc­tur­al sub­strates for her ma­ter­i­al ex­per­i­ments. Their trans­par­ent or opaque qual­it­ies give the give the wall works in the series Square Shad­ows (2024) a layered ap­pear­ance that in­creases in depth with the in­cid­ence of light and re­mains change­able. Grant­ina sees light as an artist­ic me­di­um that com­ple­ments her sculp­tures or be­comes a form in it­self. The im­ma­ter­i­al­ity of light fa­cil­it­ates her search for a destabil­ising qual­ity in her artist­ic vocab­u­lary.

CUR­AT­ORS
Stefanie Gschwend (Direk­t­or­in / dir­ect­or Kun­st­mu­seum / Kun­st­mu­seum Ap­pen­zell), Daiga Grant­ina (Künst­ler­in / artist)

EX­HIB­I­TION IN­STALL­A­TION
Chris­ti­an Hörler, Chris­ti­an Meier, Ueli Alder, Asi Föck­er, Vanessà Heer, Fla­vio Hodel, Luca Tarelli, Re­gina Brül­isauer, Mar­grit Gmünder, Xiaop­ing Meier-Chen, Madleina Ru­tishaus­er

OR­GAN­ISA­TION
Stefanie Gschwend, Luca Tarelli

ART EDU­CA­TION
Domenika Chandra

MU­SEUM AT­TEND­ANTS
Domi­n­ique Franke, Mar­grit Gmünder, Ian Groll, Bar­bara Met­zger, Heneisha Mor­ris, Madleina Ru­tishaus­er

CA­TER­ING & EVENTS
Re­gina Brül­isauer

ED­IT­OR
TEXT
Stefanie Gschwend, Luca Tarelli

PROOFREAD­ING & TRANS­LA­TION
Stefanie Gschwend

PHO­TOS
© Daiga Grant­ina

GRAPH­IC DESIGN
Data-Orbit / Michel Egger, St.Gal­len

AC­KNOW­LEDGE­MENTS
Bi­anca Chu, Katal­in Deér, Daiga Grant­ina, Kim Lim Es­tate / Turn­bull Stu­dio, Math­ilde Labuth­ie, Ilma Rak­usa, Leo­pold Thun, Alex Turn­bull, Johnny Turn­bull, An­gelina Volk, Toan Vu-Huu, Ju­li­us Woeste, Anna Zvaradny