Exhibition · Axel Vervoordt Gallery · Hong Kong
Curated by Bianca Chu Axel Vervoordt Gallery is delighted to present Source, a solo exhibition of artworks by late Singaporean-British artist Kim Lim. Source brings together sculptures, prints and photographs by Kim Lim in an exhibition exploring rhythm, transformation and the vital energies held within matter. Taking its title from Lim’s 1988 sculpture, the exhibition begins with the idea of the source not simply as a fixed point of origin, but as a generative condition: a place from which forms emerge, change and return. It also refers to source material—the observations, things, experiences and documentation that inspired Lim’s artistic journey and process. Photographs selected from the artist’s archive punctuate the exhibition. Although photography remained a constant element of Lim’s working life, these images have previously been presented primarily as archival or supporting material. Here, they occupy a deliberately ambiguous position. They offer traces of Lim’s travels and working processes, revealing her sustained attention to structures, rhythms and forms found across natural and built environments. Lim was highly attuned to her chosen materials: to their particular densities, textures and internal rhythms. Writing about Source, she described how its carved lines “widen and spread, deepen and sometimes disappear,” while the granite itself possessed “a kind of compact energy.” Such observations reveal an artist who did not treat stone or wood as inert substances upon which form was imposed. After 1979, when carving stone became a central focus of her practice, the dialogue between the movement of Lim’s hand and the latent capacities of the material became even more visible. Through prolonged observation and considered intervention, she responded to the weight, resistance, grain and energetic properties of each stone, allowing something of its inner life to be gradually revealed. Organised around ideas of breath, movement and attention, the exhibition…