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Jihee Kim: Daytime Sleepwalking — at the Crypt Gallery

An upcoming solo show by Jihee Kim in the Crypt at St Pancras.

Jihee Kim (김지희): Daytime Sleepwalking

Sleepwalking
Date: 1 – 4 August 2013 (Thu – Sun 11AM – 6PM)
Preview 31 July 2013 (6 – 9PM)
Venue: The Crypt Gallery, St Pancras Church, Euston Road, London NW1 2BA
Artist Talk: 2 August/ Venue & Time (TBC)

Curated by Alpha Art Association │[email protected]www.10aaa.co.uk

For more information, please contact:

Amy Gahyun Lee (이가현), Curator │ [email protected]
Junghwan James Ahn (안정환), Creative Manager │ [email protected]

Alpha Art Association is delighted to announce an exhibition of new works by Jihee Kim (b.1983, South Korea). Entitled Daytime Sleepwalking, this is Kim’s first solo exhibition in UK.

In the exhibition, Kim desires to re-illuminate her intimate engagement with the notion of introspection, which has always given an impetus to her creative activities. The works presented here are based on her self-reflection and explore the artist’s primary inspiration on the theme of female identity however, this time Kim further develops her craft in more sophisticated and vibrant way of presenting.

For the exhibition, under the conceptual exhibition title Daytime Sleepwalking, Jihee Kim presents her series Sleepless Nights, Impossible Anxiety and two hair drawing series, titled Stalker and Show Me Your Love. Like a somnambulist walking, surrounded by a large crowd on the street in daytime, Kim’s secretive fantasies involving her insatiable aspiration encounter audiences throughout the exhibition. At the show, viewers can experience the feeling of enjoyment to sneak a peak at her covert diary, even cathartic from the uncomfortable tension not just between the artist and the viewer, but also between the viewer and his or her cheeky inner-self.

In the two series of Sleepless Nights and Impossible Anxiety, Kim brings abandoned English books to her new creative medium. Both series stands on her emotional detachment from English language and culture, especially in Sleepless Nights, she transforms obscure and meaningless English books into her private diaries by simply putting personally engaged images inside. Impossible Anxiety series is characterized by pop up images of groups of female paper dolls on the books. It implies Kim’s skepticism on Asian women’s contorted pursuing of westernized standard of beauty and Kim’s concern for women’s invisible double torture of westernization and male-centered consumption society.

Hair drawing series, Stalker (small paper drawings) and Show Me Your Love (large size roll paper drawings) present the artist’s unquenchable thirst for absolute beauty and continuous anguish over aesthetic criteria defining the female identity at the same time. Women in Kim’s drawings are only featured by their hair styles and other elements of their appearances do not have any impact on their existence. The definition of absolute beauty is constantly deferred by hidden faces, and the conviction of impossibility ironically stimulates the viewer’s curiosity.

Jihee Kim, born 1983 in Seoul, South Korea, lives and works in London, UK. She received a BFA and an MFA in Dept of Painting at Dong-Guk University, Seoul, Korea and now she is undertaking a MFA at Goldsmiths college, London, UK. Recent Group shows include: Off the s{h}elf, Stockwell Studios, London(2012), Works on Paper, GX gallery, London(2012), Art Warehouse, JE SUIS gallery, Seoul(2013). Her work is included in many prominent South Korean public collections such as The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Kwacheon and Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul.

(automatically generated) Read LKL’s review of this event here.

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