Solo Exhibitions (Brief)

She has held solo exhibitions at Alternative Space Brain Factory(Seoul, Korea), Na Gallery(Seoul, Korea), Changdong Art Studio(Seoul, Korea), Gallery Chosun(Seoul, Korea), Incheon Art Platform(Incheon, Korea), UARTSPACE(Seoul, Korea).

Group Exhibitions (Brief)

Participated in group exhibitions at Kumho museum of Art(Seoul, Korea), Dongsoong Art Center(Seoul, Korea), INSA Art Center(Seoul, Korea), Incheon Art Platform(Incheon, Korea), Arko Art Center(Seoul, Korea), Total Museum(Seoul, Korea), Seoul Museum of Art(Seoul, Korea), Parksookeun Museum(Gangwon, Korea), Jeonbuk Museum of Art(Jeollabuk-do, Korea), Ilmin Museum of Art(Seoul, Korea), Ilmin Museum of Art(Seoul, Korea), Seoul Arts Center(Seoul, Korea), Soma Olympic Museum of Art(Seoul, Korea), Gallery Planet(Seoul, Korea).

Awards (Selected)

The artist was awarded the New York Special Prize in the Education Program conducted by the New York Center for Media Arts in 2000 and was selected as the artist at the 2008 Songeun Art Awards.

Collections (Selected)

Her works are in the collections of National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Seoul, Korea), Korea Film Archive(Seoul, Korea), Incheon Foundation for Art & Culture(Incheon, Korea).

Originality & Identity

Im Sunny started her career as a media artist. She created a series of self-cloned self-portraits intervening in popular cultural icons, such as movies, news, games, and dramas.

Those are presented in her solo exhibition 《Hello, I’m Sunhee》(2003). In the following solo exhibition 《Wonder_self》(2004, Nahwarang, Seoul) and 《Hidden Objects》(2007, Gallery On, Seoul), contemporary media such as television dramas were applied as cultural metaphors. Looking at it as a metaphor, she continued to express herself in various media by finding interactive codes between artist and audience.

Since then, in her solo exhibition 《Rose Life》(2012, Space Beam, Incheon/2013, Gallery Chosun, Seoul), the artist has paid attention to the female image of this era that the media imposes on us; ‘the gender of a coded woman.’ She satirizes the times and our society by reconstructing the images that the media instils into videos and paintings.

Im Sunny shows a mainstream change in her artworks in both subject and medium. Significantly, the artist introduced paintings that explored the ‘flatness of painting’ in her solo exhibition 《The Flat》(2015, Incheon Art Platform). From then, the artist dealt with an issue of ‘flatness’ raised after Cézanne, an effort to eliminate the simple representation of the object’s appearance.

Namely, the artworks do not contain every other story but have main expression features with ‘colours’ and ‘brush texture’. Im Sunny tries to construct a gradual shift with colour build and formativeness in space aesthetic.

Therefore, the artist puts different layers on the screen, such as seriousness and a sense of balance. The composition of colours, lines, forms, and screens highlights the visual factors much more in her painting technique. It is an independent perspective of Im Sunny’s topics she emphasizes.

Recently, she has used unique approaches like colour composing techniques (i.e.atmospheric perspective) that show a further proliferation from the traditional views. Hence, the artist’s voice about the essence of the medium and contemporary possibilities of Korean painting has been reflected in her domain since she started painting.

Style & Contents

Since 2015, the artist Im Sunny has been developing her art with the ultimate goal of exploring ‘flatness’ and the essence of the form of modelling factors.

To do so, she eliminates space or perspective by the single-point perspective of the Renaissance era and focuses on ‘colour,’ ‘forms,’ and ‘brush texture’. It means adopting the various techniques appearing in Matisse's works, which attempted to reveal the flatness of painting through Cézanne’s visual and perceptual screens and colours, especially how to show them into ‘medium’ and ‘converting’ them into contemporary views.

Likewise, the artist’s perspective reveals a conceptual approach to the essence of painting. Also, the artist concerns with the ‘viewpoint,’ and ‘perspective’ of photography and painting works. For example, she referred to the idea of paintings as an object or medium, according to Gerhard Richer and David Hockney.

Topography & Continuity

Im Sunny has been contemplating the issues of ‘flatness’ and ‘purity/naiveness’ in the Korean modern painting atmosphere. She has studied ‘painting of painting’ and ‘painting as media’.

Even though there are many copies of historical art, such as following before the 19th century or imitating popular materials and styles, Im Sunny’s Western painting shows a critical perspective on art-historical achievements.

Im Sunny’s proactive views and efforts are one step forward from the painting method using colours and brush texturing. Her solo exhibition, 《The Medium: Layered, Lined》(2019), shows the use of space, the division of surface via layers, and the lines as a formative factor in entangled relations with colours. Also, it shows her exploration process showing the possibilities of her method.

The artist’s work captures the significant context of Western painting history. Still, it also questions the position and meaning of the painting methodology regarding problematic Korean awareness and her perception, respectively. It makes the audience look forward to Im Sunny’s progress even more.