Kwang Hyun Kim

BIOGRAPHY

Kwanghyun Kim (b. 1982, Busan, South Korea) is a painter whose work explores perception, solitude, and the unstable nature of the human face. Raised by a comic book author father and an illustrator mother, he grew up surrounded by narrative imagery—a foundation that later expanded through studies in Korean Painting at Kyungsung University, a background in graffiti, and experience working in Japanese Buddhist art. These influences merge into a fictional, psychologically charged universe that defines his practice.

Drawing on traditional East Asian painting techniques, Kim builds colour through thin, layered washes and fine brushwork, which he fuses with the textured immediacy of spray paint. This combination creates subtly tense surfaces where line, colour, and particulate pigment coexist.

His recurring characters, Pipzin and Gatak, serve as tools to question how we read and interpret faces. Their expressions are intentionally difficult to grasp: proportions are stretched or fragmented, slowing the viewer’s instinct to recognize emotion. This strategy traces back to a childhood moment when Kim perceived his own face as disjointed parts—a lasting metaphor for the fragile, constructed nature of identity.