Events

The Dal Schindell Gallery is pleased to present City Illuminated by Min Young Kim. This exhibit of luminous cityscapes opens on September 7, 2022, and runs until September 28, 2022.

Join us for the opening reception on September 7 from 4 to 7 pm.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Min Young Kim’s painting practice explores the urban landscape as a place where complex relations emerge. Kim focuses on the spatiality of the densely populated areas of the city center, exploring how the individual can be connected to a social system that extends from oneself, into one’s family, their living space, to a town, and then a city. It begins with the smallest social unit—the individual house—and depicts the lights that stream through them, reflecting the warmth present in relationships between the self and one’s community. Using light, the landscape is represented as transforming through time. The varying brightness of lights combined with the architectural structures are multiplied and layered across the surface of the canvas in a way that widens the viewer’s gaze, similar to panoramic photography. Between the paintings of day and night within the series, light is shown to gradually turn on with nightfall and gently turn off again with daybreak. In this way, the lights mimic the breath of life, waxing and waning like every one of our lives. In this way, Kim’s work attempts to portray the embodied subjectivity of urban life, expressing the sensory feeling of what it means to live in a city.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Born in 1983 in Daejeon, Korea, professor and painter Min Young Kim holds a PhD and MFA in Painting from Hongik University and a BFA from Kyung Hee University. Her passion for painting harkens back to her childhood, where she first became enraptured by the images in the book series Where's Waldo. Her interest lies in the aesthetics of populated spaces, such as subways or crowded marketplaces, and hopes to convey an embodied sense of the interpersonal connections in those spaces throughout her painted works. Currently, Kim teaches Basic Drawing at Hongik University and is an art instructor at the Seoul Art Center.

She has held numerous solo exhibitions at major institutions across Korea. Recent highlights include her exhibition Scenery of the Day at Sanwoolim Art Gallery in 2021, Between Life and Rest at Gallery Mir in 2019, and City’s Hidden Face at the Gangneung Museum of Art in 2019.

She is the recipient of the Special Award and Support Prize at the Danwon Art Festival in 2017 and 2018. Her artwork is in the public art collections of institutions such as in the Korea Government Art Bank, Korea Development Bank, the Gyeonggido Museum of Modern Art. In addition, two of her paintings are in the permanent collection at the National Museum of Contemporary Art of Korea. She currently resides in Seoul.

MASKS OPTIONAL

According to the latest provincial health order, masks are not required to attend, but guests are welcome to wear their own if they feel more comfortable doing so, and all guests are asked to respect the decisions of others. Please note that Regent College will comply with whatever provincial health orders are in place at the time of the event.