Pioneering London-based contemporary art gallery, HOFA, are pleased to announce the highly anticipated 2023 solo exhibition of South Korean abstract expressionist artist Ilhwa Kim, who from 29 September to 11 October will unveil new works in her living architecture series at the Gallery’s Bruton Street flagship.
Titled Tactile Hands, the show will enthral viewers in the exquisite details of Kim’s unique sculptural paintings, composed of tens of thousands of seed units. Each seed unit has a combination of straight lines and circles, which compose a tiny single universe. The Korean artist dyes each sheet of Hanji paper by hand with thousands of different colours cutting and rolling the layers of paper to make them rigid. It gives Kim an emotional bond with every single universe. Not a single universe has the same shape, look or colour in her work.
Since joining HOFA, Ilhwa Kim’s career has soared owing largely to the phenomenal appeal of her work. She has staged solo shows at HOFA, London every year since 2017 and has established a reputation for large, one-of-a-kind artworks.
Acquired by museums and featured in prominent collections worldwide, Kim has successfully made her mark in the auction world with remarkable results. Her artwork, ‘Tuner’s Notes’, was auctioned at the 20th Century & Contemporary Art & Design Day Sale at PHILLIPS in Hong Kong on 30th November 2022. It sold for three times its estimated price, setting a new benchmark for the value of her pieces and heralding a new phase in her illustrious career.
Kim who describes her works as seed universes, sensory maps and living architectures, had this to say about the subject of her upcoming show, “I create artworks that combine sculpture and painting in order to explore the richness, dynamism and depth of sensory experience on canvas. These layered, entangled and ever-evolving sensory experiences, happening in a world defined by nature’s infinite possibilities, are what I strive to capture in my works.”
“Tactile Hands: Thick Painting or Thin Architecture?
Our hands, feet, mouth, ear, eye, and nose meet the world surface directly. Eye only visual perception remains limited.
There are active spaces just above the flat work surface, where either a brush stroke runs bold or thin architecture can stand firm. Our body movements have never been limited to the visual flat surfaces, which became even super transparent flat surfaces.
My tactile surfaces would like to remind you how our bodies learn, remember, and evolve. Our tongue, our body, and our maneuvering skills are the tactile components to experience the surface of our earth.
Tactile Seeds make visible the importance of the tactile movements through our whole lives.”
-ILHWA KIM