Ji Woo Kim

Long Story Short is delighted to present 999:Release, the first solo exhibition in France by New York-based painter Ji Woo Kim.

This captivating collection of paintings offers an intimate glimpse into the highly personal yet universal experience of a breakup, exploring not only the ways one grieves the end of a relationship, but also the loss of oneself that is realized upon leaving a traumatic situation. Kim explores these themes through the lens of the post-millennial generation, delving into her interest in the contemporary phenomena of romanticization and oversharing in the digital realm.

Condensing a year-long period into a 24-hour cycle, Kim titles each of her 12 paintings with a specific time of day, representing both what her days looked like in the aftermath of her breakup, and the different stages towards healing. The paintings weave in and out of dichotomies such as the personal and universal, and literal and metaphorical, and this underlying theme of contrast continues in the stylistic choices and imagery portrayed. 10:37pm, a pink-toned painting filled with the frenzied mark making and scratching of the surface often seen in Kim’s works, depictsan act of self-undoing, where she relies on cigarettes as a means to cope, while 11:40 am illustrates her taking steps towards a healthy way of healing, participating in EMDR therapy, a powerful tool for processing trauma.

In 9:10 pm and 6:39 am, a pair of self-portraits of the artist, Kim paints herself situated in domestic spaces of her kitchen and bedwith tears rolling down her face in eye-catching hues of fluorescent pinks and reds. She injects a grain of humor into her situation and the body of work by painting from source images of crying selfies that she took throughout the past year, both as an attempt to memorialize a pivotal chapter of her life, and to explore the digital self and its relation to the post-millennial modus operandi of coping through humor and romanticization of all aspects of life, including heartbreak, melancholy, and mental illness.

With raw honesty and remarkable skill, Kim’s brushstrokes lay bare the emotional turmoil of sorrow and the nonlinear nature of attempting to mend what has been broken. Her paintings invite viewers to embark on a deeply personal journey of resonating with their own experiences of love, loss, and the human capacity for growth and renewal. Just as the number 9 symbolizes, when one cycle ends, another begins..