Kim Young-Hee

Sculpture as Image

Young-Hee’s works are very Korean as well as very western and universal. Despite of her move, Young-Hee never forgot her Korean roots. She never really fully embraced the rational or expressive western art movements. She is among the first Asian artists who successfully tried to combine the best of both cultures. Her art reflects a thousand year old tradition in a frame of a thoroughly modern approach to the interpretation of the world.

At first she draws from things and impressions of Korean everyday life, for example a mother who teaches her child painting in ink. Later, she creates more robust characters which are soon less naturalistic and highly stylised, gaining more aesthetic power in the process.

Her latest work strongly draws on photography. The starting point are paper sculptures which are reduced to the necessary elements, e.g. a weeping frog or a teapot with a cup. The setting is then painted with color. Kim Young-Hee then takes a picture of this mini-universe of hand-made sculptures and colored background. Some of these photographs include live models and real things, which are again painted for the picture-taking. Sometimes even the photo itself is being painted over.
The plasticity and the lyric of her work points to her professional maturity. Young-Hee’s work is full of love. Heavenly, motherly, brotherly, childish love. And the love to nature, because many aspects of her art indirectly reflect nature.