Printed Matter is pleased to announce the publication of Hunters Follow Harpy Shadows, a new artists’ book by designer and artist Rin Kim. The experimental work takes the form of an extended poetic sequence in the high fantasy style, set in a world built from reimagined Korean folklore, biblical storytelling, and queer mythologies. 

Available here

Across twenty-five chapters, Rin Kim’s text recounts the tangled, cosmic history of shapeshifting goddexes intermixed with an otherworldly cast of demis, dryads, wraiths, satyrs, tieflings and sirens. Taking cues from the Old Testament and the depths of fanfiction forums online, the project alternates between narrative storytelling in the direct mode of epic religious texts and a series of Psalmic interventions spoken in the voice of the gods. Like a series of connected visions, Hunters Follow Harpy Shadows hands down the origin stories of distant worlds — of clashing immortals, species dying out, and deities fading from power. It is both a fantasy saga beset by violence, warfare and blood sacrifice, and a lovers’ song of longing and transcendence.

During the origins of the earth, mortals sacrificed their children to the belly  of the depths, to Yawong: god of subservience and singularity…

Central to the project are new images by Oliver Davis, shot on 35mm film, which offer views of a fragmented landscape — jewel-like glimpses of sunlit trees, river stones, and murky underbrush. The lush world seen in these photographs, a version of earth devoid of all humans and figures, provides a quiet space outside of time for staging the mythic struggles of the gods. The book’s typography suggests perhaps an ancient document or illustrated manuscript; the sharp, secret lettering carrying the magic properties of a blade used to split worlds.

Hunters Follow Harpy Shadows is published as part of Printed Matter’s Emerging Artists Publication Series.

Retail | $25.00. Available for purchase [here]

Hunters Follow Harpy Shadows Published by Printed Matter, Inc. First edition of 1000 copies 6.5" x 9.5" 108 pages  Cloth-bound hardcover (Feincanvas), with tip-in and metallic foil stamping Printed CMYK with two hits of pantone ink (Deep Space Black) on Arena Rough 120 gsm

Design: Rin Kim  Photography: Oliver Davis  Editing: Olivia Ross  Production: The Uses of Literacy 

Typeset in Arachne by Leonhard Laupichler; Apoc Revelations by Matthieu Salvaggio and Ilya Ruderman; and Mughal by Jose Houdini and Fabio Florez 

Printed and bound by die Keure, Belgium 

Artist Bio Rin Kim, born in 1997 in Watertown, New York; is a multi-diciplinary trans chimera, demi, hydra, mutt, graphic designer, filmmaker, alchemist, performance artist, writer, and yong working around non-binary mythologies, ritual storytelling, and fantasy. Their work is a hyperfocused movement of a particular upheaval, an ongoing irruption that re-arranges every assumption of the equivalence of subjectivity and identity. https://rinkim.com/

This publication is made possible with the support of the Jerome Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, as well as the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.