Sky Kim | Microscopic Obsession
ON VIEW
April 7 - May 1, 2022
RECEPTION
Thursday, April 7, 6-8pm
LOCATION
413 West Broadway
New York, NY
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New York-based artist Sky Kim (b. Seoul, South Korea) is known for her meticulously patterned, incantatory watercolors. Her paintings operate as optical illusions inviting the viewer into a meditative state of increased self-awareness and tranquility. Kim creates work from a place of stillness with meditation as her guide. “I have to raise my vibrations to the highest level,” she says of her process. “I put myself in that state so that I am very close to my highest self.” From this place, she creates a complexity of repetitive patterns that appear to undulate and pulse if the viewer stares at them long enough. In her words, “a lot of my viewers experience some kind of energy coming from the center of my work. They feel vibrations.”
Themes of reincarnation and ritual are prevalent in her work. Through the act of gazing, she attempts to reconnect her viewers to their sense of blank slate perfection, something that, according to the philosophy of reincarnation, we lose after we’re born. She speaks of one clean, unbroken human energy that emanates from this place of oneness. “I want them to realize that we are all together. One big tapestry.” She also draws inspiration from sacred geometry (an ancient and spiritual mathematical language that undergirds certain aesthetics in nature and its development), because she believes that humans are ever-evolving; our lives and self-hoods expanding outwards, like the universe, rather than in a traditionally linear fashion. The ancient principles of sacred geometry, its logarithms and designs, help her to consider who we are as humans, and what we’re about - an essential inquiry at the heart of her work.
Born in Seoul, Korea, Kim attended Pratt Institute for her MFA. She is a recipient of the National Korean Art Competition Awards, a Pratt Institute Art Grant and Jersey City Art Council Grant. She has exhibited and participated in art fairs in major venues around the world, including the US, Denmark, UK, Mexico, Germany, Canada, and Australia and has been lecturing as a guest artist, panel and keynote speaker at universities and art conferences. Her work has received international critical acclaim in The Wall Street International, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Juxtapoz Magazine, The Korea Herald, Artlog and The Korea Daily, Artefuse and Arts Observer, and on WMBC-TV, and she was the subject of a profile in Forbes magazine in 2022. The artist lives and works in New York.
Chase Contemporary is pleased to announce its first solo show of paintings by globally renowned artist Sky Kim. Kim’s works explore themes ranging from sacred geometry to reincarnation. Incorporating circles and sacred spirals in her work, Sky draws on physics as an inspiration, “as a means of trying to figure out what we are made of and who we are. I believe in oneness.” Microscopic Obsession will feature a selection of large and small-scale works on paper, and will be on view from April 7 through May 1 at Chase Contemporary’s SoHo gallery. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, April 7, from 6-8pm at 413 West Broadway.
Microscopic Obsession celebrates Kim’s oeuvre across her Multiverse and Portal series, which use celestial imagery and mandalas to draw viewers into other dimensions. Each work is a voyage into Kim’s mind, psyche, and creative process. Her repetitive patterns create vibrations and can function as optical illusions, while awakening emotions through her scientific and spiritual queries. The multiverse is a philosophical concept that suggests there are numerous, parallel universes overlapping our own, each with its own unique trajectories and histories. Kim’s work often references the parallel worlds that define the multiverse. For instance, inner vs. outer space is a common motif in her art, and her intricate watercolor scrolls straddle both 2- and 3-dimensional space simultaneously.
The many marine-related themes in Kim’s work also originate from her pervasive interest in the multiverse. The ocean is one of the few observable alternate worlds here on Earth. Kim notes her fascination with odd sea creatures, describing how she is “…glued to their ballerina-like movements and mysteriously transparent bodies and luminosity. Such fragile aquatic forms including soft globular colonies in my work hints at our most ancient unicellular ancestors.” Kim’s work has many compositional affinities with traditional mandalas, which use repetitive patterns as instruments of meditation. Indeed, she mentions that “repeating patterns is like citing a mantra over and over again,” and that the creation of her work is a deeply meditational act.
Sky Kim was born in Seoul, South Korea, and lives and works in New York, where she spends as much as 12 to 14 hours a day in her studio. The labor intensive nature of Kim’s work is critical to understanding its broader meaning. She notes that “Time is the most precious thing to me.” The time invested in her work is meditational and allows her to access a different, transcendental state of mind. Kim draws inspiration from quantum physics, the study of matter and energy at the most fundamental levels, and sacred geometry, which asserts that certain geometrical shapes and proportions embody sacred meanings.Kim earned a M.F.A in Painting from Pratt Institute, and won the National Museum of Contemporary Art's National Korean Art Competition Awards and a Pratt Institute Art Grant. Her work has been exhibited at major venues and art fairs throughout the world, including the Toronto International Art Fair, GLAAD Art Auction, DUMBO Arts Festival, Gwangju Biennale, MOCA DC, Governors Island Art Fair, and Art Miami. She has lectured as a guest artist at several universities.
