Artist Biography

Seoul-based artist Yool Kim, born 1982, graduated from Hongik University Graduate School of Industry in 2015 with a degree in Colour Studies, including the science of colour and nature of personal colour. This raised awareness in the artist of the way colour interacts with a person based on both their context and their current emotional state – not merely their complexion.

Kim navigates ideas of identity and subconscious mind through her mixed media on linen artworks. Her paintings focus on figures expressing a form of ‘disorder’, portrayed not only through facial expressions, but through a veritable bleed of the concept throughout the piece. The aim being to express the sometimes dissatisfaction and dizziness that inevitably comes with the human experience.

Kim’s work often highlights her own self-expressions that have not yet finalised, an expression that crystalised in a state of evolution through her work. Her work is delicate and beautiful shroud in stark and multifaceted story. It is circular and undulating, immersing the viewer in a sea of reason that can only arrive at the emotional as the artist intends.

Critiqued as both “heavily psychological, representing extreme emotional states, yet also figurative and composed”, the artist explains, “I change from disorderly to complex thought to frame the world around me. I try to convey acceptance of change and longing for mental and physical freedom. I place importance on colour, background, shaped, composition and emotion of the subject.”

Kim has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in her Seoul and around the globe. Amongst her achievements, the artist has participated in the Court tree collective in New York.