■ Exhibition introduction

One Step Closer is an exhibition getting one step closer to animals and contemporary art while appreciating the artist Kim Woojin’s (b. 1987) crane sculptures. The artist, whose childhood dream was to become a zookeeper, added his mental image of cranes to stainless sculpture and created cranes that appear to freely play somewhere between reality and imagination.
 

The crane, this exhibition’s artwork theme, is an entity long symbolizing splendid isolation and cleanness and an animal with deep ties to Ulsan. Ulsan’s former name of Hakseong means “home of the crane.” Dongheon, a Joseon-era administrative building adjacent to the Ulsan Art Museum, was originally called Ilhakheon (lit. “one crane house”) and Banhakheon (lit. “befriending cranes house”), and this meant they would govern cleanly and uprightly like a crane for the people. Gahakru, the main gate of Dongheon, means “beautiful house where a cranes flies up” and, if one looks closely, the building resembles crane wings.
 

Kim Woojin has been creating works with the theme of animals represented by deer and puppies, and etc., since early on. The artist does not stop at simply depicting the animals’ outer forms and seeks to include the narratives of the places his works are to be place in. The reason the crane sculptures, the artist’s first attempt, feel friendly is probably because they include an art-making process consuming considerable time, the artist’s affection and curiosity regarding cranes, and the artist’s warm wish for viewers to feel colorful everyday joys.
 

The cranes, encompassing viewers’ personal memories and the local community’s historic experience, expand the gallery to a Utopian space. Seemingly ready to take flight any moment, the cranes remind us of the pictures we freely drew with crayons in childhood and bring out landscapes from our memories in which nature and animals are united, of sights we saw sometime while passing by. We hope this exhibition will be an opportunity to forget about fatiguing routines for a moment and become a step closer to animals and contemporary art.