Chaeri Kim: Love, Light, Gravity
“This is my dream journal, my own records of emotions and daily log turn into the language of graphite or ink on paper and the digital collage on screen.” — Chaeri Kim
Love, light, gravity, 2023. Acrylic, epoxy, wool on canvas, 31.4 x 39.3 in (80 x 100 cm).
Love, Light, Gravity is a solo exhibition highlighting nineteen works from an artist with a forceful style that permeates her work regardless of the employed medium. Chaeri Kim’s work in this show ranges from crisp graphite drawings to billowing chalk compositions on paper and tufted figures on cotton. The variety in this collection of works, deemed “dream journal” by the artist, show us the many ways she records her own tract of memory as it integrates into her psyche or disintegrates into the background of her practice.
The figures in Kim’s work echo this dis/integration of memory with each form’s repetition; cementing it further into her mind and her visual language. Consistently, she integrates insects, birds in flight, bodies in movement, and faces in contemplation. Her organic shapes mix with moments of specific reference through realistic snapshots of violence, recognizable characteristics of animated characters, and basic elements of pixelation that create the foundation of online aesthetics.
The eye is one of the most consistent characters in Kim’s work, haunting the foreground and background and arriving in many forms whether implied or actual. Many pieces incorporate the eye in a literal sense, starting with the opening work Love, Light, Gravity (2023) which superimposes a photographic representation in the angel or bird figure’s left wing. In Trinity drawing series proto: 00 (2022), the eyes breach the fourth wall and stare straight to face the viewer. Disembodied, eyeballs fly from the explosion of pigment and thread in Hilo y aguja 1 (2020). This persistent inclusion pushes us to find eyes in every work — whether that be through shimmering orbs or looming almond shapes.
Trinity drawing series proto: 00, 2022. Color pencil and pencil, label sticker on graph paper, 8.2 x 11.8 in (21 x 30 cm).
Salvation, 2020. Tufting on cotton, 60.6 x 44.8 in (158 x 114 cm).
Eyes are the tools of integrating our visual field into our memory and they feed our mind’s abilities of visualization. Floating through her work they remind the viewer of an omnipresent artist, presiding over the integration of her imagery into a cemented form, while also serving the dual purpose of reflecting the self back to the viewer. The seeping feeling of scopaesthesia that comes from her work is heightened by their presence and ties into Kim’s awareness of the internet and the adaptations of reality that are altered and observed through a screen.
This awareness is evident in Kim’s effective methods of abstraction. Many works function by way of perceptual and actual grids, which mimic the pixels of a screen. Some of her designs and patterns use the idea of a pixel to abstract as well — obfuscating and disintegrating images. Her references at times pop up like windows and disappear behind a layered fog. Although we are faced with a barrage of images, they are softened by her compositional symmetry and interrupted by hard diagonals that guide one’s attention. This referential and veiled abstraction of layers creates an ambient flow through the pieces that is natural and non-confrontational yet powerful and surveilling; a signature effect of Chaeri Kim’s work and the show as a whole. — Trinity Lester
About the Artist
Chaeri Kim (b. 1995, Busan, South Korea) is a visual artist currently residing in Seoul, South Korea. She completed her bachelor’s in Fine Art (B.A.) at Seoul National University of Science and Technology in Seoul, South Korea. Her practice explores new rhythms of relationships between spiritual and fantastical personal episodes in a progressively commercialized and objectified world. Her charcoal drawings and digital collages expand and morph into other physical forms of medium such as painting, printing, weaving, tufting and mixed media installation.
Artist’s Statement
This is my dream journal, my own records of emotions and daily log turn into the language of graphite or ink on paper and the digital collage on screen. It mainly deals with images produced in the world of consciousness and unconsciousness, and I capture the most primitive feelings found in the moment that comfort me, give me anxiety, pain, sadness and happiness.
The images I irrationally draw on paper or screen consist of a mixture of history, mystery and a gift/present. I like to visualize the data collected from reality and screens which I call ‘unreality/surreality’. Stereotypes of typical roles portrayed in society, violent news — crimes, wars, poverty, and natural disasters occurring in everyday life, are faded away and cloyed by shallow layers such as algorithmic Ad pop-up windows. — Chaeri Kim
Kim’s solo exhibition Love, Light, Gravity is live on our website until January 19th, 2024; view the exhibition here and visit her Instagram @chaerik1m to see more of her work.