About the Artist
Seoyeon Kim b.2000 graduated from Sungshin Women's University with a degree in Western Painting and is currently in the master's course at Sungkyunkwan University's art department. She participated in major exhibitions such as The Blue Eyes over the Window (Space Artel, 2024), Wavy Wave (Hori Art Space,2024), The House Built While Walking (Ray Project Seoul, 2023), and Unfinished Road with Eight (Bincan Euljiro, 2022).
Seoyeon Kim works on a painting based on realities indirectly encountered beyond the digital window. Things that have never been encountered or experienced in person are contacted on a single screen, and they are drawn and stored in the existing material world. 'I' and 'object' stand opposite each other with a single window in between, and there are invisible films between the object and the window.
The film was made by the authority of the image owner or error on the Internet. She discovers interesting points from the things hanging between 'I' and 'object', and draws them as images.
Seoyeon Kim - In the studio
A quick Q&A with the artist
Here, we ask the artist questions to uncover the journey that shaped their artistic identity and to explore their passion for art.
Question 1: Can you describe your creative process from conception to completion? What sources of inspiration do you draw upon most frequently in your work?
My work always starts with the image. When I'm attracted to any state or shape in an image, I first draw a lot of similar images, and then I think about the points that I'm attracted to in common. So I always collect a lot of images at the beginning of my work.
Question 2: How has your style and approach to art evolved over the years? Are there any particular moments or experiences that significantly influenced your artistic development?
Definitely, Interest in Internet images began to grow last year. I thought that the most contemporary feature was the 'Internet', and I wanted to show the most familiar sensation in my 20s.
During my day, I absorb most of the scenery or images through my small cell phone screen. There are all kinds of things that are gathered inside, and I can indirectly experience things that are not easily experienced in real life. For example, if there is a video or image of a bear riding a kickboard, a comment says, "Now that times have changed, I can see him riding a kickboard in the corner of my room." At the moment, those words made me feel impressive, and I felt that we owned all the existing images beyond a small digital window.
Question 3: What messages or emotions do you aim to convey through your art? How do you hope your audience will interpret and connect with your work?
I don't want my painting to be seen as just a single layer of Internet image. We can empathize with the object in the image, dig up the history behind the image, and discover the errors that overlap on the image. I wanted to say that if you face an object through a digital screen, you can look at it more three-dimensionally.
Seoyeon Kim - 'Gummy Bear!'
Seoyeon Kim - 'Blue Glass Eyes 1'
Seoyeon Kim - 'A Grey Expression'
Dream-like Imagery: The face in the artwork has an uncanny, dream-like quality that is characteristic of surrealism. The distorted features and the almost ethereal texture evoke a sense of the unreal or the subconscious.
