“I Want to Bring Out What Lies Deep Within the Mind”
 
Painter Wheiza Kim (61) graduated from the College of Fine Arts at Seoul National University and completed her graduate studies in printmaking at Sungshin Women’s University. She currently lives in Riverhead, Long Island, New York, traveling between the United States and Korea to pursue her artistic practice.
 
In the early 1900s, Kim studied abroad for three years and taught students at the Yookyoung Foundation. In 1997, she came to the United States through the Visiting Artist Program at Stony Brook University, State University of New York. Beginning in 2001, she taught Korean contemporary art at Stony Brook for two years.
 
Since participating in the Korean Art Grand Prix Exhibition at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in 1972, Kim has taken part in dozens of group exhibitions, including the 《Four Korean Contemporary Printmakers Exhibition》 (2002) and 《Asian American Women's Alliance》 (2004). She has also held more than ten solo exhibitions in Seoul and New York, including those at DOOSAN Gallery (1986), Walter Wickiser Gallery (1994), and Insa Art Center (2008).
 
Kim's paintings are easy to feel but difficult to understand. At first glance, they appear gentle and lyrical. Images of nature and landscape permeate her compositions, while the subdued tones, predominantly in shades of blue, create a sense of tranquility that allows viewers to breathe with ease.
 
Kim's works possess a distinctive sense of volume. In recent works such as Trap of Attachment, she paints not only on the front surface of the canvas but also along its sides, top, and bottom. In another recent work, Journey, she depicts a lake with a floating boat on a shallow box divided into five sections across its width. By extending the painted image across the entire surface of the canvas, she creates a three-dimensional quality reminiscent of sculpture.
 
Had she confined herself to depicting toys, wooden horses, and women, her work might have been regarded as a representative visual interpretation of the late poet Park In-hwan's ‘The Wooden Horse and the Lady.’ Yet Kim's paintings go beyond such lyrical expression. They seek to explore what lies beyond the narration of emotion. Kim frequently incorporates ‘doors’ into her paintings. These doors sometimes appear suspended in the sky, while trees, flowers, and butterflies are depicted within them. In Journey, a lake landscape unfolds across a box-shaped composition divided into five sections. The work invites viewers to contemplate “the relationship between seeing and drawing, and the question of dimensionality inherent in painting as a medium that contains these images.”
 
Kim explains: “I reflect upon the self-centeredness, delusions, and prejudices that I continually encounter in life. I want to bring out what lies deep within the mind. Through profound meditation, I seek to dismantle established notions and express that process through painting.”