At 88, Kim Yun Shin is gaining fame for his harmonious paintings and sculptures.

Kim Yun Shin learned to make art from poverty. Born in the northern region of Korea in 1935 as a result of the Japanese occupation, the artist developed his creativity with the few materials at hand: drawings and objects with sticks, sorghum straws and melted candles. Before fleeing to Seoul with her mother, Kim – now 88 – lived with her five siblings in the rural town of Anbyon until she was 10 years old. There, he grew up near the sea and immersed himself in pine forests and flowering camellias. “Nature itself was my teacher and my friend,” Kim told Artsy in a recent interview from Seoul.

“My fear of nature is not so much about the natural landscape, but about the principles and order of nature,” he continued. Over a six-decade career, the artist has focused on ideas derived from the natural world—balance, growth, and metamorphosis—in a painting and sculpture practice that foregrounds organic materials and intuitive processes. Today, Kim is gaining wider international recognition for his career-charting work after a long period of under-representation in the art market. His dedication has been rewarded this year with some great achievements, including the joint representation of Lehmann Maupin and Kukje Gallery – his first representation in commercial galleries – and inclusion in the main exhibition of the Venice Biennale.

Kim was one of the first Korean women to receive formal training in sculpture, having trained in the sculpture department of Hongik University in Seoul, graduating in 1959. Then, in 1964, he went to Paris to continue his studies in sculpture and lithography at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. This time abroad showed a more active art scene than the one he knew in Seoul; specifically, it shed light on the unequal access to resources of female artists in Korea.

“‘There are many women artists in Korea who graduated from art schools, but they are not able to do anything,'” Kim recalled thinking when she returned to Seoul in 1969. “‘In Paris, there is a global movement, and women artists are active. What a shame for our Korean women artists.'” Kim founded the Korean Women Sculptors Association in 1974, along with Lee Yang-ja, Young Ja Yoon and Kim Jeong-sook, motivated to make a space for its members.The association, which remains active in the Korean art scene, provides resources and mentorship opportunities to female sculptors throughout South Korea.

During this period, Kim’s sculptures were inspired by architecture, including wooden accessories over there (Traditional Korean houses). Then, in 1978, he started the series of wooden sculptures “Add two add one, Divide two divide one” based on the Eastern philosophy of yin-yang, which revolves around the idea of ​​balancing opposing forces. Works from this decades-long series will be featured in two solo presentations by Kim. Add Two Add One, Divide Two Divide One 2000-653 (2000) will be included in his show at Kukje in Seoul, on display from March 19 to April 28; and Add Two Add One Divide Two Divide One 2012-21 (2012) will be on view at Lehmann Maupin in New York from March 14th to April 6th.

These assemblages use pieces of wood cut by Kim with a chainsaw, creating totemic vertical structures that reflect the trees from which the wood is derived. This cycle of deconstruction and reassembly expresses the artist’s ideas about balance and continuity. “As I cut, I create new facets in the tree,” Kim said. “In this way, the faces that are created are connected to each other.”

In Seoul, he worked as a professor at Kim Sangmyung University until he received an invitation from his niece who lived in Argentina in the early 1980s. When he arrived, he immediately felt fascinated by the country. “The first thing that caught my attention was the beautiful skyline. The earth and the sky were flat. Second, the people were friendly and kind. Thirdly, there were trees, thick and lush trees,” he said. By then, wood was involved in his practice, and in Korea, the forests were thin after the war. For him, Argentina had many options, including many materials, such as carob and palo santo wood.

Kim’s move to Argentina also gave him the opportunity to escape the prevailing trends in Seoul—such as photorealistic, narrative, and figurative works. Instead, he developed a more idiosyncratic visual language through his textured assemblages and paintings. In many ways, “Song of My Soul,” a series of paintings characterized by vivid colors and kaleidoscopic abstract forms, explores the same themes of balance and metamorphosis as his sculptural practice. Kim brought to these works sculptural techniques of addition and subtraction, using a knife to apply and remove paint.

Coming from post-war Korea, Kim was revitalized by his time in Argentina. “The main reason I was so attracted to the first vitality I felt in Argentina was the experience of witnessing the suffering and deaths of the war,” he explained. Later, in 2008, he founded the Kim Yun Shin Museum in Buenos Aires, realizing his long-held dream of creating a space to display the works he had done in the country for about 20 years. The vitality of this period in his career has encouraged the artist to continue creating; even now, the octogenarian artist is evolving.

Ahead of the upcoming shows, Kim “has been immersed in the idea of ​​organically integrating sculpture and painting into one work,” he said. Included in the presentation at Kukje, Add Two Add One, Divide Two Divide One 2019-19 (2019), a sculpture that seems to sprout from the ground, reflects this vision. The assembled wooden components are painted in attractive colors and designs, including a vine that runs through the entire sculpture. After decades of parallel exploration in painting and sculpture, Kim continues to mix and match materials and techniques from both aspects of his practice.