MYUNGJIN KIM: SPOTLIGHT EXHIBIT
December 9, 2017 – January 27, 2018
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Myungjin Kim was born in South Korea. She received her MFA in ceramic art at Seoul National University in 2002 after which she moved to the United States. She has taught Ceramics at Santa Ana College, Cerritos College, University of Georgia, Athens, UGA Study Abroad Program, Cortona, Italy as well as at California State University, Long Beach, California, from 2011 to 2015.
Her work is about human life stories that blend the real and surreal using figuration, animals, vessels and assorted objects. She works primarily with porcelain and most works carry drawn and painted illusionistic imagery.
Kim has been recognized for her exceptional talents with a 2016 Archie Bray Foundation fellowship and two year residency and additionally a prestigious 2017 Wingate fellowship.
“I have included many birds and assorted painted vessel forms in the tableaus that I have built for the past 3-4 years. I expanded that to include the use of different animals as well as the human figure in order to grow my ability to talk artistically about our complex human life.
The idea of vessels and containment has been very important to me. The physical human form is the embodiment of the spirit or essence of an individual and this signifies the essential element of life. Ceramic vessels are curious human invention created to solve simple or mystical problems. I have created many vessel forms and painted images on them that establish a dramatic space that is both real and surreal and work to tell a story that breathes a similar force of life into my work. The narratives I build come from ideas between the real and imaginary worlds which I purposefully intertwine. My work creates an intersection for both natural and cultural objects, which I am equally interested in making. I am particularly inspired by still life European paintings and through this process find symbols and create narratives that run parallel to human experience with these stand-ins. I am at the same time fascinated and gratified that when I work with clay I can paint, draw and sculpt in many different ways In the same work.”