Ho Jae Kim (b. 1993, Seoul, South Korea) received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2016. Most recently, he has participated in exhibitions at Harper’s, New York, Los Angeles, and East Hampton (2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021); GANA ART NINEONE, Seoul (2024); Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles (2023); Make Room, Los Angeles (2023); NEXX Asia, Taipei (2023); Christie’s, New York (2022 and 2020); Sotheby’s New York (2022 and 2018); and EXPO Chicago, online (2021). Kim’s work has been acquired by the collections of JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and X Museum, Beijing. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Can you speak more to the significance of purgatories in everyday life that goes beyond the religious meaning and how you incorporate purgatories in your work?
Most of our time on earth is in waiting or in transition. Whether we are sitting on a long flight between countries, walking under an endless array of scaffolds in New York (never in the beginning or the end of construction), or caught in traffic, there are many moments when we are caught in between. Although we desire to remember our lives through moments of celebrations and accomplishments, these moments are only brief, and we soon find ourselves waiting in solitude that is our everyday. My paintings depict liminal spaces that are solemnly quiet, as I believe they are truer representations of the reality that I experience. Thematically, I’ve been calling them purgatories. Long ago, I decided that I wanted to re-present the world that I see and the world where I exist. Painting about purgatories is my attempt to depict images that can exist closer to our reality and to the people who are making sense of their existence.
My idea of purgatory extends to our internal struggle too. Many are bound by circumstances, whether financial, social, political, geographical, or other. Although it is natural for people to dream about a better future, these boundaries keep many distanced from the ability to act upon their dreams. Living a life that is directly linked to one’s passion is a privilege, and unfortunately, it is not a reality that is available to everyone. Dreams can provide purpose and the ability to muscle through even the toughest times, but a long displacement from one’s dream can render one wilted and lifeless.
Through my studio practice, I try to bring significance to the moments that we may, at a glance, find insignificant. Although the mundanity of the quotidian life may seem miniscule, there is beauty to be found. The potential to find such beauty is an ability as the in-between can be a scary place because it is not yet defined. Being in a transition means that identities or meanings have not taken shape yet, and such is the unknown. However, if a person can find the courage to accept this void, one can begin to look within to find the beauty and happiness that is already present. Such is why my paintings depict scenes of quiet struggles. My paintings are purposefully balanced and centered to create a static composition to further emphasize the notion of quietness that is alluded by the depicted figures, objects, and settings.
What kind of research goes into the development of your philosophical concepts that incorporate literature, music, theatre, and other artistic disciplines beyond the visual?
With the overarching theme of purgatory established, I find metaphors and analogies from literature, philosophy, movies, and experiences that provide languages to explain the concept of the in-between. Trying to describe purgatory is an attempt to describe nothingness. I found that this process is similar to the teachings of Zen Buddhism, which often use analogies from nature (i.e. Reaching Zen is like a leaf blowing in the wind) as the attempt to describe purgatory is the attempt to define something that is yet defined. The state of purgatory is the state of indeterminacy and transition. Although difficult to explain, I am aware of its essence, and when I come in contact with things that are of similar dynamics, they lend me the ability to explain something undefinable.
For example, when I randomly rewatched Cast Away (2000), the dynamic between the protagonist and Wilson, as well as the nature of the desert island, suddenly reminded me of my studio practice and how it had the potential to become a device to speak about liminality. Eventually, Cast Away became a point of entry to speak about psychological hardship during solitudes, a type of experience that is more common than not in modern society.
What is the creative process used to produce your work?
When I was at the Rhode Island School of Design, I became fascinated with Piero della Francesca, an early Italian Renaissance master who was both a renowned artist and a mathematician. When Piero prepared his compositions, he precisely calculated the exact contours and proportion of figures, as well as the exact distances between figures, objects, and architecture. Because everything was perfectly measured, Piero had an absolute awareness of his space. With this level of exactitude, his works exist in the uncanny valley, ultimately providing a sense of uncanniness, similar to the effects of Magritte and De Chirico.
This fascination with Piero aroused a desire to be like him as a student, and this desire became the start of a series of creative problem-solving, which eventually became my current painting process after a decade. The first wall that I ran into was the fact that I am nowhere close to being a mathematician like Piero. However, I found out that there are tools available today that could help me mimic Piero without the need to do the math. Thinking of 3D modeling programs as an extension of optical tools in the Western canon of art history (i.e. linear perspective, camera obscura, etc), I was able to use the computer to create a digital reality where I had a complete sense of space. Once I became versed in 3D modeling and rendering, I then had to figure out how to extract something digital into our physical realm. Looking back at classical Western art as a point of reference, I found inspiration from how frescos were made. Because frescos had to be painted quickly, as pigments could only be applied during the short time when the plaster of the wall was wet, fresco artists had to make cartoons or actual-sized renderings of the fresco drawn in the convenience of the studio. Once cartoons were finished, they were brought to the fresco wall, and the lines of the drawings were transferred onto the wall using charcoal transfer. Using this technique as a source of inspiration, I began experimenting with ink-jet transfer, a transfer technique that uses glue to extract ink pigments from inkjet prints onto a desired surface. Then the same glue was used to seal the transferred ink and little paper remnants from the transfer process for achievability.
Because the type of glue I use is thick, it leaves a very textural surface after usage. Because the surface was so textural, it fought with the contours of the images that were painted on the textured surface. The drawings alone were not able to dynamically distinguish what was in the foreground and background.
Ho Jae Kim currently has two solo shows on view.
‘Castaway’ is currently on view at GANA ART NINEONE, Seoul from August 22, 2024 to September 22nd, 2024. This is his first solo exhibition in Korea.
Harper’s is pleased to announce Castaway, New York-based artist Ho Jae Kim’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. The presentation features new paintings by Kim and opens Saturday, August 10, 6–8pm, with a reception attended by the artist.
Across his rigorous practice, painter Ho Jae Kim examines questions of liminality: the artist renders scenes of existential transition and disorientation, transcribing the wayward architectures of purgatory and other entrapped states. In Castaway, Kim continues to investigate the aesthetics and affects that color this psychic in between. He considers the film Cast Away (2000) as a cultural reference from which to address such interior reckoning. In the blockbuster film, Tom Hanks plays a man deserted on an island; with few tools and resources, he must learn how to endure the trauma of solitude. He personifies a volleyball to cope with his loneliness, naming it Wilson. As Kim sees it, Wilson does not only function as a material object. Like an artwork, Wilson is the product of internal and external rumination—he embodies the protagonist’s psyche.
For Kim, the career of an artist fosters the kind of psychic alienation invoked by an uninhabited island. To produce work, an artist must engage in persistent self reflection: they must undergo a vulnerable process of questioning their ideas, realizing them, and then ushering them into public viewership. The artist’s studio can thus be seen as a site of unprecedented hardship, but also nourishment—a place that challenges brave souls to uncover difficult truths. Kim encapsulates this schism in the work Studio Island. Here, a nude figure sits beneath the shade of a palm tree, painting hatch marks on a large canvas indexing time. The painting, like the figure, appears obscured, enshrouded by the darkness that likely awaits in a nearby jungle. But beyond the tree, light emerges: speckled beige brushstrokes color a brilliant sky and a sandy beach, like a silver lining of clarity after troubling introspection.
This meditative scene, like many of the featured works, appears weathered by its layers. Kim’s intricate process involves sketching, digital rendering, chemical transferring, and adding thick swaths of ink and pigment. The resultant works incorporate dense impasto, harboring the essence of many marks and concepts built into the fabric of each visual plane. This intricate process takes center stage in the textural work, Mythical Island. Here, a figure is engulfed by unforgiving terrain: compact coats of stirring gold, pink, and navy shade the forlorn intersection where the ocean meets the sky. The unyielding brushwork shades a man who holds up a dripping vessel in front of the sea—a prized discovery amidst the pitfalls of survival.
Ultimately, throughout Castaway, Kim sustains a tone that yearns for rescue. Across these scenes of lonely strife, the artist’s protagonists appeal to be saved from misery. In the same breath, however, Kim uplifts the knowledge that arises from a state of enduring isolation. It is within these moments that one is forced to address the inner workings of the mind and spirit, narrowing in on the inquiries and reasonings that drive us forward. Castaway demystifies the fear of being alone. In this moving exhibition, Kim reveals the latent insight derived from periods of solace.
Dance, 2024 (below)
