03 / ABOUT
Youngmi
Kim
KOREAN ABSTRACT PAINTER · SEOUL
For nearly two decades, Youngmi Kim has developed a visual language in which blue becomes a field for memory, gravity, silence, and time.
Biography
Youngmi Kim is a Korean abstract painter based in Seoul. She holds a BFA from Sungshin Women's University College of Fine Arts.
Since the mid-2000s, she has continued to investigate blue not as a depiction of sky or landscape, but as a space in which memory accumulates and time leaves a trace.
Her paintings are built through horizontal strata and vertical flows of pigment. The former hold accumulated memory; the latter allow gravity and chance to participate in the making of the work.
PROCESS
How the work is made
01
Layer
Repeated horizontal layers are built slowly across the surface, allowing color to retain the residue of earlier gestures.
02
Gravity
With the canvas upright, pigment is allowed to move downward. Gravity becomes a collaborator rather than a force to be controlled.
03
Time
The final surface preserves both deliberate decisions and irreversible accidents. Time enters the work through what cannot be repeated.
“Blue is not landscape. It is a place where memory settles.”
YOUNGMI KIM