Wheiza Kim Solo Exhibition, July 3~20, Gallery Seojong

Wheiza Kim’s work fundamentally combines the characteristics of painting and installation. Rather than simply painting on canvas, she paints on three-dimensional supports such as boxes and folding screens, while mirrors, above all, appear consistently as objects within her work. Mirrors play an essential role in Kim’s artistic practice; one might even say that, more than the meticulously painted images themselves, the mirror serves as the central element of the overall composition.
 
Through her distinctive compositions incorporating mirrors, Kim invites us to reflect upon a world filled with form and color and upon our own existence, which, like a mirror, reflects that world. If the image painted on the front of the box represents the world perceived through our five senses, the image on the back may be understood as our subconscious, while the mirror represents our unconscious or deeper consciousness.
 
Works such as The Last Light, It Is Setting, and Spring Rain can be seen as the results of profound contemplation on the visible and the invisible, reality and illusion, the world and the subject, and phenomena and perception. They examine, through the penetrating gaze of meditation, the workings of the mind that lie at the root of the ego, delusion, prejudice, and attachment we continually encounter in life—the habitual processes through which we discriminate, interpret, and respond emotionally.
 
Without the need to interpret the works through any particular theoretical framework, if we simply view them through the lens of our own life experiences, we may find ourselves thinking, “Indeed, everything in this world is but a fleeting dream.” At the same time, we are led to contemplate, through a deeply contemplative gaze, the true nature of our mind to which the works draw an analogy. We are reminded once again that the path to genuine peace in life ultimately begins in the mind and ends in the mind.