Hee Ouk Kim

My paintings are inspired by people and their colorful backgrounds

The paintings mirror the multicultural mix of Los Angeles. The many faces, individually drawn, reflect different expression- happiness, sadness, anger, joy, confusion, clarity, and so on. As Martin Wong, co-editor of Giant Robot wrote, “This process lends itself to the themes of innocence and understanding of one’s social roles in both public and private experience.”

I drew the characters in the second eupnida walking artistic movements of the hard to fit the story. By putting them together with a narrative that is used to gain the most beautiful them. Where tiny figures once populated the backgrounds of my work, they have now become the focus. Their awkward forms are deliberately depicted in a manner that appears narrative but serves to demonstrate a complex examination of human relationships. As Wong noted, “Neither devolving into abstraction nor replying on narrative, these paintings speak to the ambiguity of one’s identity and its relation to others’.”