Cindy Ji Hye Kim

A sense of deep unease pervades Cindy Ji Hye Kim’s psychologically charged works. A 2016 graduate of Yale’s MFA program, the artist uses charcoal, oil pastel, graphite, and ink to create monochromatic paintings that become sculptural through their incorporation of carved wooden supports. The artist’s typically black-and-white palette draws on grisaille, a painterly technique involving a neutral base coat that supports subsequent layers of color; in Kim’s visual language, the shadowy underpinnings of paintings allude to other dark elements that lie beneath visible surfaces. While their recurring motifs suggest repressed childhood trauma, nightmares, and bodily harm, Kim has framed her practice as an act of instinctual expression devoid of narrative intent.

Kim received her B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2013 and her M.F.A. from Yale School of Art in 2016. She has presented recent solo exhibitions at Kunsthall Stavanger, Norway; Casey Kaplan, New York; François Ghebaly, Los Angeles; and MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge. Kim's work has been featured in Artforum, Art in America, ArtAsiaPacific, BOMB Magazine, the Brooklyn Rail, Cultured Magazine, The New York Times, and The New Yorker. Her work is held in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Collection Majudia, Montreal; Sifang Art Museum, China; and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence.