As if two elegant harps were to orchestrate a vortex of harmony and dissonance with the mechanical precision and articulation of clockwork, Triaxial II (2017) is a liquid furnace that incinerates metal particles and sand residuals, turning them into a fluid gyre, coagulating dissolution into suppleness, winding up, twisting down, cochleated, rushing geometry into entropy and vice-versa, disintegrating and regenerating. Yunchul Kim's piece is cyclicity, open-ended closure, a system of reciprocity and a resolution of the polemic. It is this polyphony of multi-nodal intensity and Variantology, as German Media theorist Siegfried Zielinski might concur, that forms the leitmotif of the artist's inner chamber. If Zielinski's polyphonic articulation on Variantology stems from his erudite study of Deep Time through the lens of media archeology, Yunchul Kim, once a student of the prolific professor, inherits not only his mentor's pluralist worldview of humans ancient and modern, but also takes the word very literally in the mineralogical sense of stratification of rocks in light of geological immensity and with the cellulose composition of trees that enliven, and of that which subsists at the bottom of the deep ocean. In Strata (2024), the artist explores material verity that is beyond immediate human perception and cultural conception, excavating and unveiling the depth of pigmentation unseen by a naked eye. In an homage to Raymond Roussel, the French poet who has inspired the artist during his formative years and alongside his prolonged pataphysical elucidation of the world through poetic, extra-scientific reveries and introspections (the artist named his studio after Roussel's novel Locus Solus), Yunchul Kim has created a living sculpture, inventing a new substance granulated from minerals that can only be viewed by custom-designed lenses subtly integrated into hexagonal glass containers. Stony liquids gush from small jets inside the translucent vessel, arising upward as if longing for and embracing solar gravity, the source of all life. Transmuting and transforming the unstable into the potential, the boiling liquid culminates in the co-arousal and co-ascension of the organic and the artificial, incinerating all that are incommensurable and contradictory of the grime of the earth into the Dust of the Sun (La Poussiere de Soleils III, 2022). If Studio Locus Solus is the hermitage where Yunchul Kim and his assistants exercise their arcana of metal, stone and vegetation, Remnant Vitrine (2024) opens a window unto the sorcerous inside. Nested in an alcove in the mezzanine area, the Remnant Vitrine is a miniature laboratory that hosts a medley of the alchemist's archive of things, objects not following the convention of classification, but alongside the exactitude of materiality such as measurements beyond the apparently visible or matter's indeterminacy contingent on temperature, pressure, and the elasticity that's yet to be unleashed from the potentiality of the thing itself. The juxtaposition and infiltration of varied categories defy the taxonomy of species, genus, family, order, class, phylum, kingdom, domain, etc. The chandelier of magic (Impulse) hanging above appears as a crystallization of wondrous and uncanny things, its hydraulically powered pumps resemble the respiratory connectedness of a living tree, pulsating and resonating, circulating liveliness throughout in an audio-visual spectacle both sublime and subliminal. Yunchul Kim paints, too, but in an uncanny stunt of painterly action. Call it particle painting; it embodies the artist's somatic gestures that transpire in a process analogous to conventional painting or photo developing. Yet, it is also akin to unveiling the vicissitude of geological eternity. The bodily movement unpacks the trajectories of nature in the epiphany of microscopic rudiments. Eluvial Horizon (2024) reaffirms Yunchul Kim's materialistic symbolism as action carved in longevity, here the ephemeral has acquired its indisputable manifestation in physicality and temporality. As much a visual artist as an accomplished musician, Yunchul Kim constructs his own devices to make music that is electronically acoustic and classically avant-garde. His turntable-styled instrument C-Ray is a chemical reactor turned synthesizer which amplifies the seawater-generated electrical currents into audio signals. Sound is produced by a chemically infused "writing pencil," inscribing onto an aluminum plate. It is a material imprint that materializes the inaudible.   Yunchul Kim eschews the convenience of a metaphorical toolkit, defies the dictatorial sovereign of the Signifier. His pataphysical imperative demands a "matterphor" that is capable of agential autopoiesis, that impregnates and brings forth. His world is otherworldly in which only surrationalism can untie the never-ending knot of polarity in the mesmerizing image of Elliptical Dipole. The artist's mystic granules thus stir up emotive flux in the concurrence of cosmology and mineralogy, of biology and geology; of monad and dialectics, of immanence and contradiction; and ultimately, of life and death in the co-rising of the ascending flare of eternal return, in the atomic vortex that swallows humans and everything else, Yunchul Kim finds his own respite and solace. The earthly space is a space where you can see the hydrodynamic flow of nanoparticles made from stones, seaweed, and trees. For example in the artwork La Poussière de Soleils II (Dust of Suns II) , Kim created a new substance composed of mineral particles that boiled and spewed in a hexagonal glass container, achieving the simultaneous awakening and sublimation of organic and artificial objects. And for his new creation Strata, explores physical realities that beyond human perception and cultural concepts, unearthed and revealed the depth of colors invisible to the naked eye. About the Artist: Yunchul Kim is an artist and electroacoustic music composer. Asking fundamental questions about "material" and "materiality", he has demonstrated the possibilities of imagination and the creation of a reality beyond the realm of human experience, paying attention to its potential tendencies. His work embodies the material world imagined by the artist and is a story of a dimension before humans formed cultures or were defined by language. His works, in which humans, non-humans, machines, materials, and substances are considered equal, exist as active matter (transmattering) as the subject of events. He has won international awards, including the 2016 Collide International Award from CERN, Ars Electronica, and the VIDA 15.0 Third Prize. His works have been presented by a number of prestigious international organizations, including the Korean Pavilion, 59th La Biennale di Venezia, Italy; CCCB, Spain; FACT Liverpool, UK; Ars Electronica, Austria; Frankfurter Knstverein, Germany; and International Triennial New Media Art Exhibition, China. He was chief researcher of the research group Mattereality at the Transdisciplinary Research Program at the Korea Institute for Advanced Study. He is a member of the art and science project group Fluid Skies and Liquid Things, an artistic research project at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria.