Yongjae Kim

Yongjae Kim is a Brooklyn based artist, originally from South Korea. He works on representational painting that depicts ordinary spaces and urban places, arising a sense of solitude, loneliness, desolation and melancholy.

Kim completed a B.F.A. at Seoul National University in Seoul in 2011 and an M.F.A. at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 2014. He is a recipient of NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship2021, Best Color Work Award from Korea Society of Color Studies at “2014 International Invitation Exhibition of Color Works” of in Korea, and the First Place Award at international art exhibition “City” of Art Room gallery in 2018. Kim received Certificate of Appreciation from Manhattan Borough President through the exhibition “Flâneur in New York”in 2019. He attended Joshua Tree Highland Artists Residency Program in 2013. Currently Kim is a membership artist of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Studio Program in New York. 

His works have been exhibited at various venues such as Volta NY 2017, New York City; Sotheby's Institute of Art, New York City; George Billis Gallery, New York City; Muriel Guépin Gallery, New York City; Porter Contemporary, Brooklyn, NY; BRIC, Brooklyn, NY; Galerie Mokum, Amsterdam, Netherland; Dubner Moderne, Lausanne, Switzerland and Attleboro Arts Museum, Attleboro, RI.

Yongjae Kim is a Brooklyn based artist, originally from South Korea. He works on representational painting that depicts ordinary spaces and urban places, arising a sense of solitude, loneliness, desolation and melancholy.

Artist Statement:

Inspired by ordinary surroundings and psychological flow, my painting represents the mundane places with the subtle working of the unseen world. The intimate placesin my paintings reflect the actual environments and situations around me. Using resin based oil colors and reference of multiple snap photos, I transfer my memory fragments onto wood panel or canvas with the elaborate depiction as if I document the sites 

I compose the image with my study drawings to conceive a story that is not overtly revealed on the surface, yet imagined through settings; illuminating, exaggerated color of sky, overall downed tone and mood, contrast between broad background and subjects, flat façade like a wall set in a play, traces of someone, relation among subject matters, portraying their states and the situation they are in, and distance to the objects.

The subject matters are described as they are in unstable and incomplete condition. Their inner and outer deficient states with an inherent sense of solitude and desolate emptiness even evokes existential melancholy. However, in the implied context,what they long for is imagined and awaited to be seenbeyond the surface.