University: MFA
Graduation Year: 2018
Justin N. Kim’s paintings unfold as fields of energy – latticed, shifting, alive. Each work is a kind of map, charting the unseen connections that thread through experience. The grids hold and release at once: repetition opening into difference, pattern dissolving into current.
Though rooted in abstraction, they carry the presence of landscape – air, light, horizon – translated into a language of intervals and thresholds. The eye moves as if across woven cloth or layered terrain, sensing the charge beneath the surface.
These paintings mark what is felt – the immaterial phenomena that link us, quietly and persistently, to something greater.
I am interested in visualising the immaterial phenomena for their spiritual energy that humans cannot see but feel and experience. This energy can be felt but not touched or seen, and we recognize it only when something reminds us of the invisible threads that connect us. Nature is one phenomenon that I feel by far is most universal, offering comfort while connecting us to something greater and beyond. Through abstract, map paintings and landscape paintings I visualize this energy that connects us one way or another.