Cindy Ji Hye Kim

Cindy Ji Hye Kim utilizes a rich grayscale vocabulary in iconic representations of the body under duress. Synthesizing influences as disparate as early animation, construction scaffolding, pests and flora, medieval torture devices, and Korean folk arts, Kim’s depictions of the contorted human form speak to the limits of both body and language. She places special emphasis on the sculptural qualities of her works, from round panels with notches that reference early animation technology to translucent silk works with carved stretchers bars that impose a ghostly silhouette onto their painted compositions. Recurring characters such as a father figure wearing a wide-brimmed hat or a beehive-sporting housewife—each presented as a looming silhouette—haunt the works as menacing superegos. In her practice, which extends through drawing and painting to installation, sculpture, and animation, Kim marries a playful tangle of visual information with a foreboding sense of what lies beyond the surface, beyond the body, beyond the word itself.

Cindy Ji Hye Kim (Incheon, South Korea, 1990) lives and works in New York City. She received her B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2013 and her M.F.A. from the Yale University School of Art in 2016. Her recent institutional solo exhibitions include "Silhouettes in Lune," Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art (2024); "Sand in the Hourglass," Kunsthall Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway (2022); “Cindy Ji Hye Kim,” MIT List Visual Art Center, Cambridge, MA (2020). Her gallery solo exhibitions include shows at François Ghebaly, Casey Kaplan, Helena Anrather, Cooper Cole, Rodolphe Janssen, and Foxy Productions. She has shown in numerous group exhibitions, including those at the Frye Art Museum, Seattle; Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles; David Lewis, New York; Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York.

Kim's works are held in the public collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Sifang Art Museum, collection of the University of Chicago and Collection Majudia in Montréal.

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Cindy Ji Hye Kim

Soliloquy for Two

June 26 - July 24, 2021

2245 E Washington Blvd., Los Angeles

What is a spring dusk? Have we now reached the crux of the matter, and is this the end of the road? We are beginning to be at a loss...

Cindy Ji Hye Kim

The Sword Without, The Famine Within

June 29 - August 3, 2019

2245 E Washington Blvd., Los Angeles

This story could be called ‘The Statues.’ Another possible name is ‘The Murder.’ And also ‘How to Kill Cockroaches.’ So I will tell at least three stories, all true because...