Justin Kim

Lives and works in New York, NY, USA

Artist statement

Artist Statement Justin Kim My work explores perception and memory – specifically how the information received through each is fragmented and elusive, yet made whole through our bodies. In this way our experience of the world oscillates between dissolution and synthesis. Ultimately, I want the images to speak to a broad audience; using familiar terms to challenge our assumed relationships to the world. We generally think of both perception and memory as seamless. Memory is drawn from a continuum of personal narrative while perception is the act of seeing the world “as it is.” In truth, these are idealized oversimplifications of complex processes. At its core, the nature of experience is unstable and fugitive. To counterbalance this, our bodies (eyes, brain, heart) provide a fixed point of reference; absorbing and processing information. This synthesis makes the world intelligible, giving the appearance of wholeness and allowing us to gauge relationships such as color and value, size and shape, relative distance, and so on. The challenge in using perception and memory is recognizing this wholeness as a veil. The subject of my work is landscape; sites and spaces that resonate on a personal, aesthetic, and emotional level. The raw materials for these include reference photos, sketches, color swatches, written descriptions – anything I can use to reassemble and reconstitute the experience. Different elements become synchronized in one image: Multiple points of view are...

Artwork