I edited and wrote the introduction for LOOK, I’M A FOUNTAIN OF FILTHRAVING MAD WITH LOVE (2025) by Kim Eon Hee and Lee Mire. The full text is below.
This book is a compilation of the poetry of poet Kim Eon Hee (b.1953), translated into English by Soje, and the visual works of artist Lee Mire (b.1988), whose art incorporates Kim’s poetic texts. Both Kim and Lee investigate the human body as a site of primal experience and materiality—the human flesh as an eating, copulating, and excreting being with holes—and its visceral affects. What spills over from their shared exploration is a confrontation, and possible pursuit, of the abject, or even the Real “beyond all meaning, intention, concepts, interpretations, evaluations, categorization, judgments, and description.”1 By juxtaposing Kim’s poems with two of Lee Mire’s series which directly draws upon Kim’s poetry, the book provides a striking intersection of text and image, offering insights into the artists’ collective exploration of the body’s intense physicality.
The first chapter, “Look, I’m a filth of raving mad with love,” features a series of panel works from Lee Mire’s solo show of the same title at ZOLLAMT Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK) (Frankfurt, Germany), 2022. In this exhibition, Lee transcribed Kim’s text with cement on brown wooden panels, on which sculptures resembling oral cavities were suspended, filling an entire wall with screams of poetry. The second chapter, “Prayers,” presents a smaller series with the same title inspired by Tibetan Buddhist mandala with veils, exhibited in the 2024 group show “territory” at Sprüth Magers (Berlin, Germany). In these pieces, Kim’s poems are embedded with melted lead and emerge into view through holes in skin-like fabrics. The complete text of each poem, featured in Lee’s works is included in both chapters.
Two essays precede the chapters featuring the works and poems by Lee Mire and Kim Eon Hee to guide us. Lee Mire herself reflects on the making of the two series, discussing the profound impact and resonance Kim’s poetry has had in her work, which she describes as “both an ecstatic and a painful experience.” Johanna Hedva (b.1984), an American artist and writer, describes their connection to Kim Eon Hee’s poetry and Lee Mire’s art, both of which center on a repulsive body marked by “the leaks, stinks, telos toward decay.” With these voices, this book stands as a testament to a uniquely poetic companionship between visual art and poetry.
- Kim Eon Hee, “A Few Thoughts for Carriers,” in Lee Mire, Carriers (Art Sonje Center, 2020), p. 70. ↩︎