Artist Biography
Yim Ja-Hyuk (1976, born and based in Seoul, South Korea) is a painter whose work brings together motifs from nature, anatomy, urban life, the cosmos and personal memory, abstracted from their usual contexts to produce new ways of seeing and ordering the world.
Yim’s approach is guided by an interest in how these visual references interact with the fundamental elements of painting, such as colour, line and shape. Imagery such as leaning trees, traffic lights, silhouettes of birds, a house with no windows or doors, and strips of optical patterns take on poetic, layered arrangements that suggest mesmerising and unexpected narratives of everyday scenes. Since the mid-2000s, Yim has expanded her practice to include large murals that transform the corners and edges of exhibition walls using minimal, abstract shapes.
Yim Ja-Hyuk obtained her BFA in Painting and MFA in Printmaking from the Seoul National University in 1999 and 2001. She also received an MFA in Painting from the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills in 2003.
Notable exhibitions include The 69 Times of Sunrise (2019), Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul; Do Print! (2018), Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art; Big: Kids+Design (2016), Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul; The Third Print (2014), Total Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul; Flower in the Moment (2012), OCI Museum of Art, Seoul; Planet A (2009), Ilmin Museum of Art, Seoul; Art Spectrum 2006 (2006), Leeum Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul; Yim Ja-hyuk Drawings (2006), Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul; Officina Asia (2004), Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Bologna; and Beyond Imagination (2004), Youngeun Art Museum, Gyeonggi.
Yim had her residency at the STPI Workshop in 2007, resulting in the group exhibition BMW YAAS: Eric Chan, Heman Chong, Lieko Shiga, Natee Utarit and Yim Ja-Hyuk (2007).