The artist has drawn a series of fascinating self-portraits – you wouldn't even guess all of them were self-portraits without a small hint.
Visual arts
Minjee Hwang Kim: We Them Girls 18.2.2024 at TM gallery (Erottajankatu 9 B). Tue, Thur, Fri 12–17, Wed 12–18, Sat 11–16, Sun 12–16.
Minjee Hwang Kimin (b. 1991) in drawing Bridge (2024) a flood of tears erupts from the corner of a young woman's eye. However, the tears do not roll down the cheek, but transform into bubbles floating in the air, which float towards the night sky to connect the shining full moon in the background to the light dripping chain.
With a series of self-portraits, Kim's exhibition We Them Girls on display at the Tm gallery focuses on the blurred border between reality and fantasy. Kim, who is from South Korea and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 2019, makes self-portraits in which everyday things fade into the magical.
Minjee Hwang Kim: Bridge, 2023.
As a gateway between everyday life and fantasy are often the characters' eyes. In the work Baton (2023) flames shine in the gaze of a young woman while she holds an unburnt match in her hand. The border between fantasy, self-image and reality is stretched far in the work Study (Bear) (2023), where coarse hair has grown on the character's face and the person transforms into an animal.
Even this work is revealed as a self-portrait by looking. A small mirror is reflected from the pearly pupils, which the artist reveals in the exhibition text that he viewed as the starting point for each work.
In addition to the mirror, Kim provides viewing instructions Haruki Murakami production. The Japanese Murakami is especially known for magical realism and the mixing of Japanese and Western elements.
Kim's the works based on the western tradition of self-portraits are reminiscent of manga and anime with their bright inviting colors and wide-eyed characters. The nature motifs and compositions sometimes have the feel of the Japanese woodcut tradition.
The surfaces of the works, which are evenly colored with wood colors, and the carefully composed shapes convey a meditatively calm atmosphere, despite the playful subjects. On Haircut Day (2023) is present at the same time funny, playful and childish.
Minjee Hwang Kim, Study (Bear), 2023.
Open the social level is also attuned to the holiday of expression. The works explore the meanings brought by looking: the artist sees himself in the mirror, but draws a fantasy, and the viewer looks at the artist's self-portrait, but sees tensions between cultures.
In the opening piece of the exhibition Self-portrait in the Studio (2023) artist meets viewer actor Sandra Ohsta in a reminiscent pose. Next to it is hung the earliest work of the ensemble, Self-portrait as a Kitchen Worker (2020), where the eye is stolen by a politicized face mask in the corona pandemic.
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