Heesoo Kim(b.1984), born in Seoul, majored in marketing media design and started his career as a photographer. At the age of thirty, he started his focus on painting. He portrays stories and emotions of the mundane daily life with his unique style.
Heesoo Kim's practice is primarily a reflection on what it is to be human. Seeking to draw the viewer's attention to the quotidian moments, through portraiture Kim provides a glimpse into everyday emotions, isolating the truly universal human experience.
Exhibiting his work under a main theme of 'Normal Life', Kim brings to the forefront the
pure human condition, leaving the viewer to observe the innate human psychology without any overbearing pictorial stylization. This is achieved by reducing the figures to a minimum expression, depicting them in a casual repose, executed with bold lines and a flat perspective. Characteristic of his practice are highly compact structures, and rich earthy tones that endow his large-scale paintings with a melancholic quality.
By eliminating the ability to place the subjects within a concrete narrative, Kim creates a space where his characters can simply be themselves. Without a pre-written narrative the imagery becomes alluring in its peculiarity, as the viewer is left to ponder and look inward. Kim's portraits do not attach themselves to any specific personhood as the artist allows the space for the viewer to place themselves within the work, materializing the idea of self-reflection. By encouraging the viewers to project themselves onto his portraits, Kim highlights how everyman can be so ordinarily extraordinary.
Leaving the figures to float within an, often dark, ambiguous background, Kim's body of
work subtly engages with the mild sense of insecurity and anxiety that is so prevalent in
today's hectic world. Having struggled with his own insecurities, Kim's portraits act as a
personal and collective catharsis as the artist chooses to record the feelings and emotions that connect us all.