The Buddhist Boy

Rim Dong Sik, GLIMWORKERS

Rim Dong Sik, GLIMWORKERS, The Buddhist Boy, 1964/2024. 2 channel video, color, sound. 6 min 44 sec. With the support of Daejeon Museum of Art. Commissioned by the 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale. Courtesy of the artist

Rim Dong Sik, who entered high school in 1961, dreamed of becoming an artist and began to contemplate “existentialism” when he first encountered paintings. He found answers to his questions about life and death in the book Introduction to Buddhism, which he read by chance. In doing so, he discovered the completeness of art through Buddha’s teachings of perceiving his inner self in order to comprehend the universe and achieve the realization of transcendent beauty. The Buddhist Boy (1964) is painted like a hybrid style that unites traditional Eastern poetry calligraphy  (si-seo-hwa) and cinemascope, unfolding across a 13-piece “picture story” about a high school student from a rural village who goes to a temple to focus on his studies. There, he meets a monk around his own age who virtuously protects Buddhist teachings, reflecting the character of a transcendent artist as well as the aspirations of a boy who dreams of a new world at a time when the scars of the Korean War had not yet healed. Contemporary art collective GLIMWORKERS adapts the artist’s early painting studies into moving images by dissembling elements of text and image into multiple perspectives along with contemporary sound edition, which provokes the empirical sense of the painting’s original idea. 

Rim Dong Sik, GLIMWORKERS (Rim Dong Sik b. 1945, Gongju, GLIMWORKERS 2020-ongoing, Seoul)

Rim Dong Sik thinks about nature, life and art from an integrated perspective and has built a unique art world that communicates and unites with the purity of nature. Archives serve as means of documenting the artist’s daily life and expanding the world of imagination, not only through recording memories but becoming an artwork itself through the nature of performance. In the 1980s, he pioneered a new direction for outdoor field art (nature art), contributed to the founding of the Geumgang Contemporary Art Festival (1980) and the Outdoor Field Art Research Society (1981). Since returning to Korea in 1993 after spending ten years studying in Germany, he has carried out the Art and Village Project, which represents an innovative form of community art. His solo exhibitions include Attempt at Art (Kunstproben) (BATIG Gallery, Hamburg, 1987-1988), Sound of a Good Picture (Der Gute Ton Zum Schonen Bild) (KUNSTHAUS, Hamburg, 1989), Inside Out Outside In (Arko Art Center, Seoul, 2005), Dongbang Boy Exploration Exhibition (Daejeon Museum of Art, Daejeon, 2016), Rise Up, Rim Dong Sik (Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, 2020). He has participated in many group exhibitions including Media_City Seoul 2000, City: Between 0 and 1 and Subway Project: Public Furniture.

GLIMWORKERS is a collective of contemporary artists working in a variety of media, including photography, video and installation. This team freely adjusts its form, scale and location as needed, from exhibition documentation to the artwork production. Their major exhibitions include Dungammun (Uran Cultural Foundation, 2023) and Milk and Honey (Rabbit & Tiger Gallery, 2023), and they participated in the 12th Seoul Mediacity pre-Biennale Station.

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This program offers daily screenings of 5 sessions on fixed schedule. You may reserve seats by registering at the link and selecting a screening date and session. Reservations for multiple sessions are allowed. Group reservations and selecting multiple days are not permitted.

Admission is free Please arrive at least 5 minutes before the screening time If you do not attend a registered screening without providing advance notice (contact@mediacityseoul.kr), penalties may be applied to future reservations

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