ART CITIES: N York-GJ Kimsunken

GJ Kimsunken creates paintings and works on paper that approximate the figurative while digging deeper to uncover our shared capacity for transcendence. Through his work, he adopts a minimalist view of figuration, hinting at the human figure and the human condition through texture, line and coloration. Kimsunken works to literally peel back the layers in his compositions by scraping back the paint he applies to the canvas in an intimate and individualized manner specific to each artwork.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Yi Gallery Archive

GJ Kimsunken presents a body of new paintings in “Figuration”, his first solo exhibition in New York. In his work, Kimsunken asks questions about human existence: who are we, why are we and what are we for? Generally, he titles each work “Figuration”. The new works represent a significant departure from his previous series and are an exciting development in his continuing interest in and investigation into human figuration. Kimsunken still methodically primes the canvas with gesso, which he then covers in multiple layers of oil paint, giving the surfaces an otherworldly luminescence, as well as substantial weight. Despite his compositions’ reductive, abstract appearance – achieved by scraping away paint from the canvas –Kimsunken’s paintings represent the human figure. To the artist, this method is very much the most direct way of mark-making and is related to the core theme of his work – arousing the human condition – leading to the question of human salvation. Questions of figure and identity are necessarily a part of each work by Kimsunken, as the subtle changes in color and texture across the canvas address questions about growth, change and the implications of embracing a dynamic identity. Kimsunken’s non-descriptive figure paintings occupy a singular space between representation and abstraction. His repetitive and rigorous painting process emphasizes the physical properties of oil paint, with the resultant works deeply rooted in the history of the medium. For this exhibition, the artist reflects on new modes of representing and abstracting the human figure. Absence and presence are equally important in the new group of works – absence makes presence possible and presence exists through absence. The two states of being are inseparable. Only four inches wide, “Figuration 22. 14” is the same height as the artist himself – seventy-one inches. Here, Kimsunken makes direct reference to the concept of absence by using an exaggerated, elongated format, cropping out a large part of the canvas and giving it an almost sculptural presence off the wall. As he says, “My work seems to question the meaning of presence through the concept of absence.” Kimsunken wants viewers to stand next to a painting and feel the presence of a figure. The elongated, upright format isolates the essential image from the larger compositional structure and accentuates the human figure through articulation of the head. The exploration of this long format is further developed in two paintings, “Figuration 22. 12” and “Figuration 22. 17” which allude to cropped torsos and suggest the presence and absence of a full figure. In the rear gallery, three smaller scaled works reflect the artist’s most recent exploration in figuration. By isolating part of the human figure, one at a time, Kimsunken encourages the viewer to use imagination to fill the blank wall space, where their own figure stands. Intended by the artist to hang low on the wall, “Figuration 22. 16 (legs)” alludes to the position of legs where a human figure stands. Questions of spatial relationship are necessarily a part of viewing “Figuration 22. 13 (shoulder)” and “Figuration 22. 15” in response to one’s own figure and other bodies in space. Through radical and tactful placement of intimately sized canvases, Kimsunken invites the viewer into a transcendental experience which affirms one’s own sense of presence. As with much of the artist’s practice, these predominantly monochromatic paintings possess subtle yet richly worked surfaces with pronounced textures. Kimsunken sought to investigate the relationship between the paint material and the passage of time, with an emphasis on raising physical matter to the height of the human spirit.

Photo Left: GJ Kimsunken, Figuration 22. 16 (legs), 2022, Oil on canvas, 23 1/2 x 17 1/2 in, 60 x 45 cm, © GJ Kimsunken, courtesy the artist and Yi Gallery. Right: GJ Kimsunken, Figuration 22. 17, 2022, Oil on canvas, 71 x 19 1/2 in, 180 x 50 cm, © GJ Kimsunken, courtesy the artist and Yi Gallery

Info: Yi Gallery, 254 36th Street, Suite B634, Brooklyn, NY, USA, Duration: 23/7-10/10/2022, Days & Hours: Thu-Sat 12:00-18:00, https://gallery-yi.com/