It is inevitable that after observing all the different types of human lives, civilizations and the beyond in the corners of the world, Kimsooja’s path found itself crossing nature’s fundamentals, that is, earth, water, fire and air. These four elements, including yin and yang, are the ‘rhizomes’ of the universe. They have been considered to be part of the 115 elements that made up the world since the Enlightenment Age; this is in conjunction to the philosophy of the Oriental, where it is believed that 5 elements are the most important make ups – gold, water, wood, fire and earth. In Buddhism, it is believed that earth, water, fire, wind and air are the roots. As the Western philosophical tradition explained in 6 BC by Empedocles, just like there are four seasons, four stages of life (childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age), or four directions (north, south, east and west), there are four spheres of material (earth, water, fire and air). The synthesis and exchange of the four indestructible and unchangeable elements are brought together through philia and neikos, that is, Love and Strife. This power relationship between energy and the material can be compared to the Oriental’s yin and yang. Moreover, this is also the story of eternal recurrence (ewige wiederkunft, Nietzsche), or Freud’s Eros and Thanatos, that humans are driven by two conflicting central desires. Kimsooja’s brings her works under the spotlight: firstly, the place is where the material nature meets intimately with human nature. Secondly, she embraces and grasps human nature vis-à-vis nature as they are in fact, one.

The video installations which filmed the dormant volcanoes located at Lanzarote in the Canary Islands and Pacaya volcano in Guatemala, comprise of six separate video scenes. They were all fortuitously captured by the camera, that is, from the moving car, between stops during the walk. The random, incidental scenes of landscape happened to have caught the artist’s eyes. One wonders whether it is possible to hold the nature’s principality within the frame in accordance with the intended image map, and capture it even as the symbolic body of such as made. Should it be an impossible mission, the artist could only opt for presenting the video images as that of road signs indicative of what is beyond the framed images. Still it falls on to an artist’s scope how the coincidental images would be arranged, and by summoning up the primary elements beyond the images, thus constructing the thoughtful relevance among the works, the seemingly contradictory concept of Empedocles’ is realized; the inevitability of contingent occurrences.

The images of the volcanic areas in Lazarote were exhibited in a separate space within the Atelier Hermes. They were video images taken at night in- side a car as it was moving along the road. The artist lit the flashlight towards the darkish landscape, and the landscape in the dark around the dim edges of the circular torch light were thus captured. Through the nocturnal scenes, this work, titled , poses to contemplate – the root of creation – gauging the depth of the void in the invisible space. It is a metaphor of the darkness and the emptiness that are before civilization. Also it comments on the subconscious, an imaginative realm of human beings, alluding altogether to another theme, which is on the creation of fire. featured in the main exhibition space, presents the overwhelming waves crushing against the rugged rocks, with the surprising magnificence of a rainbow rising in the midst of the misty fog and finally the majestic sound of the waves. The viewers come face to face with the dramatic eruption of nature, assailed by the vivid sensation of the damp foams of the crashing waves. The work is a paradoxical approach to conveying a reflection on fire. Observing the mystical formation and the disappearance of rainbow like a mirage, one is given an opportunity to understand the birth of the symbolic world; ponder on the splendid desire of fire, Prometheus’ cheating of the Gods.

Another two works and were each filmed during the day and night from the inside of a moving car as well. They explore the landscape of light touching upon the surface of the objects in the scenery, reflecting the depth of changing space. The light makes contact with the surface of the landscape just as a needle does, and the artist carries out the structural search for space. It sends off the odd impression of the scenery altering despite the fact that the filmed object is nothing but the still earth: this is because the landscape was met with light and speed- both of which are mobile elements. The work Air of Earth also refers to earth rather than fire, in spite of the blazing flames of the active volcano filling up the whole screen. The artist and the camera staff took the risk of climbing up to the fire pit in close quarters as near as 200 or 300 meters from the volcano to capture the images. What ultimately draws the viewer’s attention is not burning fire but the ashes that are left by the rocky exhaustion of life. When Empedocles threw his body into the Etna volcano to finish his life, it seems that he yearned to experience the metaphor of nature’s entering nirvana. Everything returns to earth, and earth evokes old age, winter and the real realm of death.

Above the blighting volcano hangs the clear and blue sky. The work is titled, , which is another paradoxical reference to water. and doubly transpose two elements in each work: fire and water and, earth and sky. is displayed across in an askew angle. The latter captures the movement of waves which looks as though it could feel hard against one’s palm, and solid enough to be touched. The goddess of Water heals all the contradictions and affront, wrapping around the hollowness of air, the ambitious energy of fire and the pessimistic resignation of earth. She promises a new beginning and a return to life.

Kimsooja believes that the foundation of life and the principle elements of nature are not as they are visually seen, but lie in the beyond, in the mystic combination of the elements and their hidden meanings. Thus her works pose as a piece of slippery puzzle that is impossible to complete. There are 128 combinations that can occur with the 4 elements; however with circumstantial chance and irregularity, they transcend the limits of the mathematical inference. Instead, as in Bachelard’s “Dreams of the Material”, or the boundlessness of the fully blossoming Mandala – they are of the nature. To Kimsooja, the completion of works means the moment has come when she does not need to create any more works. It will be exciting, until the moment comes, to watch Kim devote herself to other works relating to the release of light and the evolution of life.