Upon entering the exhibition venue, you are greeted by a cheetah and an antelope—chasing and being chased—from the TV show Animal Kingdom. Titled “Spectacle,” the work is so familiar that it takes a while to realize the “real” spectacle. Should we consider the camera’s ability to follow animals moving at breakneck speeds in the distance? Should we focus on the fact that a familiar television program is being shown in an exhibition hall? But you might notice something strange as you continue to watch the video. The relationship between a herbivore that is forced to flee and a carnivore that hunts at breakneck speed is reversed. The scene is very familiar, except that the prey—what society perceives as the underdog—is chasing after the predator like a wild beast. This lighthearted subversion of a premise we have all come to expect is like a trailer of the thought exercises in the exhibition.

Kim Beom widens the distance between what you see and what you think. It differs from the work where you can gauge art’s depth and infinite inspiration from a single image. It is particularly noteworthy that his works are closely linked to their titles. That is because the viewer who encounters one of his paintings with the title of the piece and who experiences the job without the tag will inevitably see different things. For example, what if a painting that looks like an uncluttered representation of a mountain ridge with twilight in the background was titled “Entrance Key” or “Car Key”? In this way, Kim’s work titles make the viewers question what they see and ask themselves, What am I looking at? The automaticity of perception, the consensus, and the conventional wisdom that we naturally take for granted collapse in front of Kim’s works.

Of course, the title of a work does not determine its content. However, Kim’s playfulness is always present in the viewer, forming their perception instead of being inherent in the work. When we casually look at something, what are we seeing? Are we guessing the content based on the form? How can we be sure that the form we see matches the content we have supposed? Kim’s work brakes down this “natural” stage of perception. If we started thinking about everything we see, one by one, our brains would probably become overwhelmed with all that information. Therefore, our cognitive faculties do something I call turning away as much—and as often—as necessary. Still, Kim makes sure that the habits of perception we have experienced, learned, and developed do not just slip away.

Kim Beom’s work is often described with hylozoistic thinking. This belief says that everything has life, even things that are not considered to be living organisms. An example of this is children who are not yet fully socialized and draw the sun and clouds with human facial expressions, or make up stories about “human relationships” between objects. This kind of thinking is not just the domain of children whose imaginations are not controlled by the ideology of language—it is also evident in the works of Kim Beom, who deliberately forgets what he knows and what he has already learned to create a new way of thinking.

Other examples include a hammer that becomes pregnant (Pregnant Hammer), various objects sitting in a classroom like students and being taught that they are nothing but tools made for humans (Objects Being Taught They Are Nothing but Tools), and household appliances such as a hair dryer, clock, and irons dying and returning to the earth. The viewer secretly sympathizes with the objects as they go about their “lives,” sometimes with joy, fatigue, and despondency. In A Ship That Was Taught There is No Sea (2010), a lecturer places a model sailboat on a desk, lists the geological, meteorological, and astronomical features of the Earth, and explains that there is no sea on Earth, only land. For 91 minutes, the ship is taught that there is no sea, passively facing a truth that does not allow for its original purpose and essence. As a result, the vessel is no longer sorry to be trapped in an acrylic box, as it can no longer imagine the ocean.

Kim Beom’s series of blueprints and bird’s-eye views, published since 2002, widen the gap between images-symbols-words. His blueprints and bird’s-eye views form a sort of collection of imaginary pictures. They deal with spaces that symbolize oppression, violence, discipline, surveillance, and separation in human society, such as an upside-down school, a safe house for a tyrant, a building where hallucinogenic criminals and aggressive wild beats merge, and an immigration building. However, the bird’s-eye views of these spaces are never precise, detailed, or rigid. For example, in A Draft of a Safe House for a Tyrant (2009), the bird’s-eye view of a safe house is filled with a sense of softness and warmth. Indeed, it is hard to imagine it as a space for a tyrant who wields power indiscriminately. And yet, the actual image of the building drawn on paper is only seen when read in conjunction with the legends of each space. Once you get past the impregnable walls, dogs, wolves, dog-wolf hybrids, or werewolves guard the building in layers, inside and out. To eliminate a tyrant, you must climb a staircase that rises vertically in a terrifying style. The tyrant, on the other hand, flies through the air and lazes around his penthouse. It is a perfect space with an escape capsule, comfortable bedding, warm lighting, and even a television and a painting. The bird’s-eye view, which makes it look warm and soft, ends up deceiving us, the viewers, about the reality of the space.

Did he make a real effort to move away from the lies of images? The truth is that Kim Beom’s early works are heavily textual, and text is both a tool for expanding the boundaries of thought and creating boundaries simultaneously—and it always has an ambivalent nature. Runaway Train (1994), Untitled (1994), and Blue Painting (1995) are some of his earliest works that include instructions on the canvas. Consider Blue Painting, which reads, “PAINT THIS CANVAS PART BY PART WITH BLUE PAINT.” The image it dictates can only be “seen” by those who read the words on the canvas. The color blue exists only in the mind of the viewer, who is both the viewer of the painting and the reader of the instructions. The text on the canvas does not impose an image on the viewer, as each person conjures up a different image of blue based on their life experiences, learning, and perspective.

Above all, Kim Beom’s artworks make you laugh. Even those not accustomed to giggling at seriously and meticulously displayed works cannot escape a Kim Beom-style laugh. It may be a laugh in response to the artist’s wit or a strangely sad laughter. It can also be a laugh that requires a bit of effort, in the sense that the viewer’s familiar conventions have to be shaken up for a Kim Beom-style laugh to work. It differs from the effort needed to sense the elusive sensory language or the truth of art or what could also be called a “serious” effort to penetrate the essence of an artwork with a sense of taste and aesthetics.

In one of Kim’s major works, Painting “Yellow Scream” (2012), there is a Bob Ross-like character, someone who demonstrates the joy of painting by making the creation of every picture look effortless. He demonstrates how to create an abstract painting with layers of yellow paint, using his own painting technique to capture the “scream” in the brushstrokes. As he mixes the paints, he explains with conviction what emotion and mood each different shade of yellow represents, so all the yellows really seem to have their own emotions and moods. With each successive brushstroke, the instructor emits a different scream. The point, he says calmly, without a hint of laugh, is to “incorporate the sound of screams into the brushstrokes.” The viewer fills in the gaps between the serious abstract painting, the serious tutorial, and the ridiculous screams with a light-hearted laugh.

In short, Kim Beom makes us question whether the common sense we have “naturally” acquired in society is really “natural.” He then leaves the viewer with a chilling snicker as he asks us, How difficult is it to create a new idea between what you know and what you see? In an age where we are constantly surrounded by the newness of sight and experience, where even the word “newness” has become a cliché, the novelty that Kim proposes resides in a more fundamental dimension—perception. His way of thinking offers a timeless universal laugh by addressing the mechanisms of perception and thought. That is probably the kind of laugh we need most these days when common sense from different perspectives is at odds with one another and we are constantly being told to provide newness.