Kimsooja, To Breathe – Zone of Nowhere, 2018, 12 nylon flags, installation view at Galleria Raffaella Cortese.

LORENZO PALMIERI/COURTESY THE ARTIST AND GALLERIA RAFFAELLA CORTESE, MILAN

Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday.

Today’s show: “Kimsooja: To Breathe – The Flags” was on view at Galleria Raffaella Cortese in Milan from Wednesday, March 14 through Saturday, May 5. The solo exhibition, the Korean artist’s fourth with the gallery, presents a series of new flags which build upon a 2012 video, both of which imagine the merging of over 200 national flags into combinations of one another. A concurrent site-specific exhibition, titled “To Breathe / Respirare,” is on view at the Chiostri di Sant’Eustorgio, also in Milan, through Friday, June 15. The work, which responds to the 4th-century basilica’s architecture and 15th-century art, uses translucent film to refract light as it enters the chapel.

An excerpt from the release for the show at Cortese:

The show is a wish for coexistence, bringing us closer to an ideal world in which individuals can unite in celebration of our distinctions and our common humanity. The work’s effect transforms the ubiquitous national symbol of the flag into a more tentative object, one that is provisional and fluid, without hierarchy or political bias, putting all nations on the same level: a visual experience in which differences and conflicts between nations can fuse and blend together as one.