Von Hyin Kolk

Lives and works in New York City, NY

Artist statement

My paintings explore the schisms created by fragmentary comprehension, drawing directly from my experience as the child of Cantonese-American immigrants. Although the literal subject matter of my work varies from piece to piece, the paintings are tied together by the concurrence of maturity and naiveté mirroring my own lived experience. My linguistic understanding of Cantonese is like that of a child, even though my actual cognitive abilities are those of an adult — the discord that this produces is what I aim to express in my paintings. This paradoxical experience is physically articulated through the accuracy of my drawing and rendering, while my warped compositions and my juxtaposition of subject matter lean towards the whimsical. Within each piece, the paint application runs a wide gamut: fully rendered sections exist to parallel instances of accurate linguistic interpretation, while other areas feature cruder, thinner paint layers, prominent brushstrokes, and line contours, analogous to superficial, one-dimensional understanding. This constant push and pull between ignorance and knowledge, logic and absurdity, play and restraint, and figuration and abstraction are the foundations of my practice.

Artwork