Originality & Identity

Hun Kyu Kim's paintings began, from the outset, as political allegory. In his first solo exhibition, 《Eight Universes and The Machine》(The Approach, London, 2018), he built eight parallel universes across eight paintings, imagining each world as governed by one vast machine: neoliberal capitalism.

The 'The Big Picture'(2018- ) project, first unveiled in that exhibition, is a long-running undertaking that weaves Korean folktales, political history, and folklore into a science-fiction narrative, carrying within it the artist's reflections on the 2016-17 Candle Revolution and the transformations that followed in South Korean society.
 
The following year, his solo exhibition at High Art in Paris, 《Pure War》(High Art, Paris, 2019), borrowed its title from Paul Virilio's book 『Pure War』, casting war itself as history's recurring protagonist.

Mapping the evolution of weaponry — from stone tools to biochemical, nuclear, and genetic technologies — onto the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac, the series compressed onto a single surface a world economy dependent on perpetual conflict and a technocratic political order sustained by it. Already here, the description of Kim's work as suspended between disarming cuteness and sharp diagnosis begins to take shape.
 
After relocating to London, the artist grew attentive to how the same event or situation could be read entirely differently depending on nation, era, or personal position — an observation that crystallized into his recurring theme of perspective. 《Enemy of My Enemy Is My Enemy》(High Art, Paris, 2023) frames history not as a fixed entity but as a tapestry woven from countless viewpoints, pairing questions of narrative authorship with the notion of endless war.

That same year, the group exhibition 《Keep Calm and Give a Shit》(Buk-Seoul Museum of Art, 2023) widened this lens toward more immediately contemporary and global conflicts — the war in Ukraine, the political situation in Hong Kong, the pandemic, media, and surveillance.
 
By 《The Prayers》(Perrotin Seoul, 2025), his first solo exhibition in Korea, Kim's inquiry had extended beyond politics and history into religion and belief. He treats religion as a force that has long justified human frailty and desire outside the bounds of reason, placing Christianity, Buddhism, Catholicism, and Islam alongside an invented Church of the Rubber Duck.

Having long studied how political conviction operates much like religious faith, his gaze arrives, in this body of work, at the point where social structure gives way to the inner architecture of belief and desire.

Style & Contents

The physical foundation of Kim's practice is the technique of Goryeo Buddhist painting. Dyeing silk with seokchae, a mineral-pigment coloring method, and then layering plant-based pigments on top, he works in a process that dyes the fabric itself — meaning a single mistake cannot be undone. This method, present since 《Eight Universes and The Machine》, has remained the constant scaffolding beneath everything that followed.
 
The figures that populate his pictures are never human but hybrid animals standing in for social positions — scholar, artist, laborer. What appeared in early works as a small window or glass panel opening onto another world has, since 2021, expanded into compositions where multiple times and spaces overlap within a single image. In works such as Two Sided Rooftop(2022) and Yoga Under the Blue Whale(2023), perspectives from above, below, and in front collapse together until the picture edges toward abstraction.
 
Around 2023, his materials expanded as well. In House for Rent(2023), Whitenoise Leading the Birds(2023), and Right People Right Place Right Time(2023), synthetic gemstones found a place alongside silk and pigment, and the compositions grew dense enough to recall Goryeo Buddhist painting, Studio Ghibli animation, and the worlds of Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel all at once.
 
From 2024 onward, the 'color painting'(2024- ) series takes shape in earnest. Into the Red(2024), depicting Seoul, Into the Purple(2024), depicting London, and Into the Blue(2024), depicting Paris, are described by the artist himself as a kind of monochrome painting series — yet where traditional Dansaekhwa builds meditative depth by accumulating a single color over time, Kim's colors collide and merge, condensing into one overwhelming hue.

This experiment in color carries directly into the following year's 'The Prayers'(2025) series, where red and blue come to signify Christianity and Catholicism, green signifies Islam, and yellow signifies the Church of the Rubber Duck — color itself becoming religious iconography.

Topography & Continuity

Kim treats the collision between colors as the engine of the image itself. Layered onto this is the precise coloring technique of Goryeo Buddhist painting, Japanese animation, and a science-fiction imagination — a combination the artist himself describes as an anomaly, at once cute and critical, illustrative and diagnostic.
 
In the 2021 group exhibition 《You, in the Fantasy》(Various Small Fires, 2021) in Los Angeles, he was presented alongside Julien Creuzet, a nominee for the Prix Marcel Duchamp, and Aaron Garber-Maikovska, situating his work within international contemporary art discourse. In 《Keep Calm and Give a Shit》, he appeared alongside Wong Ping and Tala Madani as an artist who channels sharp social critique through cuteness — evidence that even while drawing on distinctly Korean material, Kim speaks in a visual language that travels easily across borders.
 
From his first solo exhibition at The Approach in London, through two solo exhibitions at High Art in Paris (《Pure War》; 《Enemy of My Enemy Is My Enemy》), to 《Big Picture: Another Universe from the Past》(E-Werk, Freiburg, Germany, 2019), and on to his first solo exhibition in Korea at Perrotin Seoul, his practice has kept moving rather than settling in any one city. In 2024, presentations at both Frieze Seoul and Frieze London sold out in full.