Sensuous and Playful Colors: Reimagining Animals and Nature

[Anchor]

Korean-American artist Ryan Kim reinterprets the ecology of animals and nature through sensuous and playful colors. His work harmonizes natural subjects with digital expressions.

Reporter Lee Ju-sang has more.

[Reporter]

[Ryan Kim Solo Exhibition: Colorganism / Through the 23rd / Gallery Gaia]

Amidst a heatwave intense enough to exhaust even a camel, a refreshing stream of water gushes from the back of a camel rendered in green.

The water droplets spreading from there moisten a cactus and the earth.

Beneath grapevines heavy with clusters of grapes, a pelican with its wings spread out has wine already flowing from its throat pouch.

A cat wearing a birdhouse on its head lies in wait for prey beneath a persimmon tree, which birds love.

Looking closely at the ecology of animals and nature, the artist adds allegorical imagination.

[Ryan Kim / Artist: I take things that actually happen in nature, combine them with my imagination, and think about how to express that.]

The core of his expression is color.

He reconstructs the intrinsic colors of subjects into sensuous layers, unfolding stories of his own.

[Ryan Kim / Artist: Rather than having your eyes fixed on just one spot, how does it look when you combine this side, that side, and everything? In my opinion, color balance is the most important.]

Several zebras are mixed together, but they are all combinations of segmented parts, and not a single one maintains a complete form.

It is a pictorial recreation of the visual confusion created by stripe patterns.

[Ryan Kim / Artist: When you look at things like zebras, they have natural shapes, but when you look at them with the ground, it creates a bit of a pixel-like feel on the ground. So, I am expressing how our world is gradually moving toward this somewhat digital feel.]

In particular, the background reconstructed in a digital pixel format breaks away from merely serving to make the subject stand out, revealing its own distinct presence.

Thus, the background and subjects together fill the canvas with vibrant and cheerful colors.

(Video Editing: Choi Hye-ran, VJ: Oh Se-gwan)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.