HEEJO KIM
Heejo Kim’s dreamy figurative paintings feel like fragments of a memory, each lived through curvy, vibrantly molten bodies huddled together in moments of domesticity and candor. Light illuminates, confronts, and sometimes hides portions of narrative, an expression which reveals much about the artist’s experience as a young woman in Seoul and her desire to find comfort and identity in space.
“Tenderness, to quote Roland Barthes, is an ‘infinite and an insatiable metonymy’ for love. The figures’ gentle gestures in my paintings are a metonym for their ineffable silent desire to be loved by others. The figures move their hands and bodies delicately as if everything around them were fragile and could break easily if touched… they keep a careful distance from each other. This distance expresses waiting for affection from others rather than trying to seize it right away. This is how they protect their hearts, but it is also a way of giving love as an active practice. Even if their love sometimes takes a long time to be noticed, it is always there.
With their tender gestures, they also hope to protect their own identity and existence. For them, love means allowing a sense of belonging. Falling in love is a process of becoming aware of the separateness of others and at the same time a process of knowing oneself. In this process, having lost themselves, they seek to reestablish their own existence by concentrating on every facet of their lives. This is [based] on the Buddhist belief, Dependent Arising, Yeongi-sull, which denies the reality of the self, but offers proof of one’s existence through interacting with others and surrounding objects… this is a symbiotic relationship: I exist because of you and you exist because of me… The will to identify their existence shows the need and desire to relate to others and to mundane things, even if that thing is just a bean or a salt shaker.”
- Heejo Kim, “Alone with You”
Heejo Kim (b. 1995, Seoul, South Korea) received an MFA in 2023 from the LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting at Maryland Institute College of Art. She has exhibited in galleries and institutions in the United States and Korea, including C. Grimaldis Gallery (Baltimore, MD), The Peale Museum (Baltimore, MD), LaiSun Keane Gallery (Boston, MA), and Uprise Art Gallery (New York, NY). She has shown nationally in various art fairs, such as Art Miami (Miami, FL), Art Palm Beach (Palm Beach, FL), San Fransisco Art Fair (San Fransisco, CA) and Palm Beach Modern + Contemporary (Palm Beach, FL). Kim is currently based in Baltimore, MD.
Featured: Heejo Kim, Red Booth, 2022, oil on canvas, 93 x 63 inches