Subway (I)

Subway (I), the first plate of a 2010 pair, returns to the underground carriage with the increased technical assurance of Kim's late Tama period. Where the 2007 prints crowded the entire surface with figures, the 2010 subway compositions tend to introduce a clearer architectural frame — seat backs, hand straps, advertising panels, window apertures — within which passengers are arranged in measured intervals. The etched line carries the geometric framework, while chine collé contributes the variations of fabric, signage, and reflected light that distinguish individual zones of the carriage. Hand colouring is applied selectively, often to clothing or to the printed material the passengers hold, leaving the surrounding space in the cooler register of the printed plate. The pair Subway (I) and Subway (II) functions as a serial reading of the same space, allowing Kim to test how different distributions of figures and props inflect the same containing structure. The work is contemporaneous with her shift from BFA to graduate training.