Artist Statement
Jieun Kim
As a figurative painter my primary concern is the exploration of the figure as a vehicle for projecting my feelings, particularly the expressive language of its poses and gestures in relation to its surroundings. This body of work addresses alienation, the state of being in which we feel separate from our world. Everyone is a stranger and strange to me; nothing makes sense anymore. This feeling of isolation and separateness is what I want to portray in my work.
As a foreigner, I have faced a lot of unexpected homesickness and nostalgia in the process of adjusting to a new environment. My strong longing to see my home makes my homeland a rosy place. The chasm between my rosy hometown, where I exist psychologically, and the place where I physically reside, creates a tension between the two different ideas of home and space. This enhances my sense of alienation. Therefore, I am creating my own imaginary world by recalling pieces of my memory of home and giving it a physical form in order to mediate between my two realities.
Lately I have been envisioning my alienated figures as dwelling in an imagined place filled with obsessive patterns and compulsive bright colors. The color palette in my painting is derived from the candy-wrappers or children’s toys, which is reminiscent of my childhood. On the other hand, the invading patterns in my work represent agonizing realities. The real factor that I am living away from home; the foreign influence began to filter into me.
